#26: No Quick Fixes: How To NOT Give Up On Your Rehabilitation Routine

When it comes to pain, injury, physical conditions, and various diseases through which the human body can be afflicted, the road to recovery often involves some form of a therapeutic regimen or exercise routine to help the body overcome the issue(s) at hand. The right rehabilitative regimen can do wonders for many conditions and injuries, but it's often a very slow, arduous, frustrating process (even when you're doing everything correctly).

The problem therefore often becomes one of sticking to this rehabilitative regimen and seeing it through to the other end of your recovery; it's hard to stay with it when we feel like perhaps our regimen isn't paying off, not working, or simply taking much longer than it should.

Over my years in clinical practice, I've seen common patterns arise for attrition rates of various therapeutic regimens, and feel there are common threads as two why this often is.

So in this episode, we're looking at different strategies and tactics that can be utilized in order to help you ensure you're sticking with your therapeutic rehabilitation routine. Whether you're dealing with an injury or condition that feels overwhelming, or you're trying to work your way through a longstanding and chronic issue, my hope is that the contents in this episode can help you feel empowered and begin to point you in the right direction for actions and steps you can consider taking to help ensure you stick with your therapeutic regimen.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

0:00 - Intro

7:53 - The problem to solve

11:27 - The big takeaway

13:30 - A few things to keep in mind with this discussion

19:27 - If it were easy...

26:54 - Knowing what you value

37:33 - Knowing your recovery timelines

44: 17 - Three feet from gold

49:23 - Pencil it in

52:12 - Avoiding a very common trap

56:42 - Moneymaker exercises & movements

1:08:05 - Going for the low-hanging fruit

1:14:20 - Key takeaways from this discussion

1:15:52 - A small request

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dealing with a physical injury or a condition that makes it hard for your body to function properly due to pain, weakness, or any other reason is undoubtedly a lousy experience. Now, thankfully, the body is a mind-blowing machine that can often make a remarkable comeback with both time and effort. And part of the comeback process often involves committing to a therapeutic exercise regimen to help create positive changes within the body. But these regimens, although very helpful, can often be a very slow grind and one that requires consistent and sustained effort. And unfortunately, many individuals give up on the process. So in this episode, we're going over some of the critical strategies you can use to help ensure you stick with your rehab routine, allowing you to not only commit to the process, but to also experience more optimal outcomes when all is said and done. So let's talk about it. Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to the Strength Resurgence podcast. This is episode number 26, which I've decided to call No Quick Fixes: How Not to Give Up on Your Rehab Routine. And I felt it was probably a good idea to make an episode on this topic because exercise, rehab after you're injured or you have a condition going on within your body, it's not a fun process to go through. And a lot of people kind of give up or fall off the horse or lose heart. You certainly don't want that to happen. So that's why I've put this episode together. All right, now, real quick, if you don't know who I am, just want to give you a quick rundown. My name is Jim. I'm a physical therapist. Uh, I'm a strength and conditioning specialist, been doing this stuff for a very long time, which just means that I'm pretty geeky when it comes to the human body and helping others get out of pain and live the stronger, healthier lives that they want to live. Uh, I can't fix everyone, I can't fix everything. Uh, but what I can do is take my passion that I have for these topics that I've collected over years and years of formal studies and real-world experiences, and give it back in ways to anyone who wants to listen with the hopes that it will point you in the right direction to help maybe just feel a little bit less overwhelmed with how to tackle some of these physical challenges that you may be up against. Because, hey, we all have to be a geek about something, which is exactly why I've created this podcast because I love geeking out about this stuff. And I would just feel guilty, and I don't feel like I'd be doing uh a good service to others if I kept all these uh kind of things I know about the body and rehabilitation to myself, uh, if I didn't give it back to others in ways that uh were to help them in some capacity. So I appreciate you tuning in. I think this is gonna be a really good episode. Now, fun fact about me as I always like to give out every episode just before we get into the heart of the matter, uh, I wanted to let you all know that homemade mac and cheese is my favorite comfort food of all time. Uh I just, I don't know if it's the little kid memories or what it is, but uh there's nothing that quite uh settles me down and hits the spot like homemade mac and cheese uh when I just want some good old-fashioned comfort food. And I figured I'd share that with you uh just because, again, I like podcasts where if I'm listening to someone, I you know, if I feel like I'm maybe getting to know a little bit of a personal side about them, then I feel that uh, you know, maybe that just makes the uh the podcast a little bit more enjoyable to listen to. So now you know one more fact about me uh when it comes to my love for homemade mac and cheese. All right. So let's get into this episode here. I'm gonna give you the quick rundown of the different topics that we'll be talking about. Uh if you are listening, you know, I always do a video podcast as well. I post these up on YouTube where there's some slides that I go through just to kind of give some visuals, uh, but you'll be able to do just fine with listening to the audio version. Uh so in this episode, we're gonna we're gonna talk about, you know, if this whole thing were easy. You know, if it were easy, uh, you know, I think we wouldn't have to make this podcast episode because we'd all uh we'd all be doing just fine with our uh rehabilitative routines and regimens and sticking to them and all that. Uh then we're gonna talk about what you value, and you'll see in a few moments uh where I'm going with that. And hopefully I'll be some helpful information for you. We're gonna have a quick discussion on just the importance of knowing timelines when it comes to injuries and conditions and how long it will likely take uh for you to kind of make progress and get through what it is you're up against. And that's a pretty important thing that needs to be done anytime we're working through what feels like a long drawn-out rehab process. And then we're gonna talk about being three feet from gold, and you'll learn in a moment what that means. And that is one of my uh favorite all-time kind of analogies, I guess, uh, when it comes to putting in the work to reap the rewards of what it is that you're hoping to achieve. And then we're gonna talk about uh strategy that we're just gonna talk about blocking it off, and you'll learn about that and understand what I mean with that as we get to that one. We're gonna talk about the the trap of all or nothing and this kind of trap of the all or nothing approach when it comes to uh working through exercise regimens or just working on uh making progress on anything for that matter. Then we're gonna talk about money maker exercises and what a money maker exercise is and why it's so important. And then we're gonna talk about going after the lowest hanging fruit, and all of these topics here that we're about to get into will hopefully help you to, by the time this episode is over, understand a bit more about what you can do to make sure that you're gonna be able to commit and have a better chance of putting in the work and going through what is likely a less than fun uh process when it comes to putting in the time and effort with your rehabilitative injury recovery or condition recovery routines or regimens that you have to do to hopefully help you get to where you want to be. So, with that being said, I'm gonna throw a little quote at you here, like I always like to do. And uh you can take this quote and apply it to all sorts of situations. Uh, this one actually comes from more of a guy in the financial world, uh, Dave Ramsey. Many of you are maybe familiar with him. But there's a quote that I heard on one of his episodes one time that I quite liked. And it was in relation to uh getting out of debt and you know, building your financial freedom. But we can take this quote and apply it to a lot of things. And I would encourage you to maybe think about what this quote means in terms of getting to where you want to be from a physical wellness perspective, making a recovery or making progress with uh the uh the physical challenges that you maybe feel that you're up against. And so the quote is that the level of intensity will dictate the level of sacrifice. And for me, I take that quote to mean that you know, the more that you want something, the more intensely you are pursuing something, then the more you're going to be willing to give up and sacrifice, uh, perhaps in the moment, for that kind of long-term result. Uh, it kind of also reminds me of another quote that says, if I uh if I do the things today that no one else will do, then I will have the things tomorrow no one else will have. Uh, not that those quotes necessarily tie directly into one another, but I think there's a common theme there about understanding that you know, to where you want to go, sometimes there's there's sacrifices made, and depending on how much something means to you, we'll determine again what you are uh what you're gonna be willing to sacrifice in order to make that happen. So I thought that was a good quote to open up with. Uh, but let's quickly talk about the main problem to solve here with what we're up against with these exercise regimen routines and giving up on them and and why this is such a big, uh, big important thing to talk about. So, realistically, you know, physical rehabilitation often requires sustained and consistent effort, uh, you know, in the form of a routine or a regimen to make overall improvement. But much of the time, it can be a very slow and arduous and you know, downright frustrating process, um, you know, even when you're doing everything right, you've got things set up as oftenly as possible, but now it's just about putting in the time day after day, week after week, month after month, maybe sometimes even year after year. I've certainly seen those conditions uh as a physical therapist. Um, you know, it's we're all in different situations, but uh I think I think we all appreciate that none of this stuff is ever really all that enjoyable to go through. But so, in knowing all of this, the the question really becomes how do we arm ourselves with the best possible mindset and the knowledge to keep pressing onward and not give up at any time throughout this recovery process? Because unfortunately, too many people do give up. They feel like they're not getting to where they want to be, and they say, What's the point? And they just decide to maybe live with uh you know physical dysfunction or even pain, and just say, hey, this is my new normal from from now on, and there's nothing that can be done about it, when realistically there could have been things that have been done about it. So that's that's the problem that we got to solve here. Now, a question that I would pose for you here, in knowing kind of where we're at with all this, is that if you saw someone working hard at something and you knew that that hard work was gonna pay off for that individual, you just you knew it. Uh whether you, you know, whether you'd seen it before, you just somehow just knew. Uh but they said like they felt like giving up, what would you say to them? What what wouldn't what would you tell them? Not that there's one right answer or one universal answer, but it's just again to kind of open up the mind a bit about you know, the problem that we're trying to solve here. Because that's a problem that I have to solve solve all the time as I work with others in the clinic and and help others out, is know what the condition is, you know, evaluated it, come up with the uh the kind of the clinical indication of of what it is that they're struggling with, and have seen it enough and know enough about the person that, hey, they can get through this, they can make the progress that they want. Uh, it's just it's gonna take time. And you work with them and you can see them putting in the work, and you can tell that they're getting better, but maybe they can't. And maybe they say that they feel like they want to give up. It's one of those, one of those things where I I have to I have to deal with this uh a fair amount of the time and and coming up with the right words to tell them about how it's gonna pay off and why they shouldn't give up. There's there's definitely an art to that because I think you have to read the individual and um kind of ride their wavelength, so to speak. But it's a question I wanted to throw over to you to hopefully help maybe kind of get you thinking about this whole kind of problem that we're trying to solve here. Now, the big takeaway of all this uh that I often like to give up front in these episodes before I start to unpack things uh bit by bit and kind of really dissect things to uh finer details. You know, the big takeaway here is that physical rehabilitation is often a long uphill battle, but we can decrease the slope, you know, the intensity of that hill we have to go up by having a better understanding of our overall situation and by analyzing our values and adopting specific mental strategies and mindsets. That's really what we're going to be unpacking here through the various uh topics in the uh upcoming parts of this episode. And so each of these tactics can synergistically work to act as a potent fuel source, if you will, for helping us to stay motivated and consistent with the recovery journey we must embark upon. And this leads us to what I would contend as the most optimal outcome possible. So there's this kind of knowledge component we have to be aware of about knowing what we're up against, but also just knowing what we value and having the right mental framing and strategies in place so that we can keep ourselves going. And it should go without saying that what I'm covering in this episode, these are not the only uh ways that we can do this, that we can give ourselves better chances at sticking with our rehab when there's no quick fixes. But what follows are just the things that I I see kind of play out a lot in the strategies that I use. And my hope would be that maybe there's one or multiple things that we'll talk about here that uh maybe you can mentally chew on and kind of uh apply to maybe your own situation, either for right now or in a future scenario. But absolutely, there's there's no shortage of strategies and uh you know ways that we can increase our overall chances of success. But uh nonetheless, the ones that we're gonna talk about here are ones that I feel uh make a big difference with the people I work with and that I've seen play out time and time again. With that being said, there's a couple of things that I will ask you to keep in mind here. Uh, because you know, injuries and these kind of physical conditions we have, it's a pretty wide-ranging topic that we're we're getting into here. And so there's there's a general correlation that we need to understand that the more involved or extensive an injury or condition is, the longer it will likely take to recover from uh said injury or condition. But we need to quickly acknowledge this because you know the stuff that I'm referring to in this episode is it's kind of the the more challenging rehab process uh as opposed to you know you you you rolled your ankle and it's sore for a couple of weeks and then you're good to go. And that's not to downplay um you know some of the work that you have to put in to maybe get get your ankle back to where you want it to be. But everything that I'm talking about here in this episode are situations that make it easier to want to give up. Because I think we can all uh kind of grit our teeth and get through an injury or a condition or a setback where we're sore for a very short period of time, but it's a pretty straightforward process. And we can certainly use what we're talking about in this episode for those situations. But uh, you know, what I'm really referring to here, I I think conceptually in this this episode is two different circumstances that we can really uh apply a lot of these topics to. And so the first circumstance is applying these tactics and strategies to an extensive or a significant injury, uh, maybe to one body part or even multiple systems of our body or multiple body parts. You know, examples that come to mind of people who've been in a terrible car crash is where there's multiple broken bones, uh, or you've had to have a couple of surgeries, or there's there's been not only uh bones and muscles broken and torn, but also in maybe internal organ uh damage from you know a really nasty trauma, perhaps, a nasty, terrible fall, um you know, a terrible workplace accident, car crash, anything like that. And many times individuals can want to give up and uh not not stay with the injury recovery process from start to finish for different reasons. And I think the main ones are one, it can it can just feel downright overwhelming, where you just kind of go, holy smokes, man, there's there's so much wrong with me. Um I don't even know how I'm gonna get through this, I don't even know where to start. Um, naturally, I would hope anyone in that condition uh is able to work with a qualified healthcare professional who can help them feel less overwhelmed and help with their physical recovery and their mental recovery and whatever else uh type of help they may need. But so stuff like that can certainly feel overwhelming. I've had conversations with a lot of my patients about that. And it can it can often feel you know even exhausting for that matter. You got a body that's riddled with pain, um, and you're now having to try and physically exert yourself in some capacity to to work on the healing and recovery process, and it can be incredibly painful even. And so those are those are factors that we need to acknowledge and really want to try and address uh through this episode so that uh people don't necessarily give up. And so if you're someone out there who's maybe in this situation, um, you know, I think a lot of these these upcoming concepts here uh will hopefully uh resonate with you in some capacity, hopefully help you out. Um, and then the other circumstance that I'm kind of referring to with a lot of these upcoming uh you know kind of strategies that we'll be working through are for maybe things that aren't quite as traumatic, or maybe once were, but there's been a lot of recovery, maybe not full recovery. But these conditions where there's just chronic and stubborn issues that just don't seem to get better. Uh whether it's, you know, someone feels like they've they've tried everything to get rid of the pain and they can't get rid of the last little bit, uh, you know, or it could be uh, you know, just something even where it's a degenerative condition, um, knee pain from osteoarthritis or uh back pain from facet arthropathy or whatever it's gonna be. And so you kind of feel like you now just kind of go in this downward spiral or downward trajectory. And that often makes people just kind of go, Well, what's the point? I'm going downhill anyways. Um, maybe I just maybe putting in so much effort to just feel like I'm getting a little bit of progress out of it. Um, you know, it's that whole topic of uh the juice ain't worth the squeeze, so to speak. Um and you can feel like you're just spinning your wheels with a lot of this because putting in all this time and effort, not getting any progress, and the mindset just becomes, hey, maybe I'll just learn to live with it, or I will solely rely on medications without necessarily doing anything else. And medication obviously has a time and place, certainly not saying that it doesn't. But oftentimes the physical rehabilitation does make profound differences if we don't give up and we're doing things correctly. So the takeaway of that long kind of spiel there is just that there's a multitude of reasons that can slowly wear us down, multiple factors that can slowly grind us down and mentally defeat us and make us believe that our recovery routine isn't effective or worth it. And so we're gonna try and we're gonna try and find ways around that. So if this whole process was easy, this is this is kind of the the first dissection of this whole uh issue that we're up against here. Um it's not an easy thing to go through in these uh situations or circumstances. Uh and I think we need to acknowledge that. I think when we pretend uh like something is uh easy when when we we know we're basically lying to ourselves, I don't think that's a healthy thing. And I think the first thing we do is we maybe we just kind of rely on that that old cliche quote that you know if it were easy, everyone would do it. And I I feel, you know, maybe there's some science that backs this up. I don't know, but anecdotally I would say that reminding yourself that what you're doing is difficult can actually be very empowering. I think it's very defeating when we say, hey, this is easy, and I still can't seem to do this. You know, that that can be quite defeating, kind of place blame on ourselves and feel like maybe we're um you know, we're um we're disappointed in ourselves for that something easy uh is something that we can't solve. But when you flip that the other way around, you go, Well, this is this is difficult. I think what you do then is you go, okay, well, if I'm still willing to try and do something that's difficult, it kind of takes the pressure off me in some regard because yeah, I've got this uphill battle. But leaning into that actively and acknowledging that and staring it in the face, I think sometimes what that does is it leaves us with this sense of empowerment because maybe we we say, well, I'm I'm up against this difficult task, so it it it's not gonna be easy, so I shouldn't necessarily be hard on myself. I'm gonna give myself to be uh you know, give myself permission to be frustrated along the way. I'm gonna give myself permission to uh get emotional about this if if I need to, but it's difficult, so that's okay. I I just think there's an element of freedom that we gain uh and the pressure we take off ourselves and we acknowledge it. This is difficult. And you know, as I was putting this episode together and putting these slides together here, it was just so funny because that that whole if it were easy, everyone would do it um statement, to me it feels very cliche. But when I stop and I really mentally stare at that quote, I think there is something really beautiful about that. So you're embarking on something that not everyone can do. And I think again, that's kind of a uh you know a very a very powerful, edifying uh thing for us to dwell on to help us in our in our pursuits. And so it's not not easy, um, and we know that it's difficult. And I think we need to still at that point say, okay, I'm I'm gonna be in pain as I go through this recovery, or I'm I'm gonna have dysfunction with my body not working right as I go through this. And I think you have to acknowledge that, which can be scary. But I think we then need to back it up with understanding that temporary pain isn't fun, but permanent pain is less fun. And so permanent pain uh is going to be something that is pretty um pretty debilitating when you're when you're living with it. And now I want to be very clear here that sometimes you know you can't fully get rid of the pain through an exercise regimen uh or through doing all the right things with lifestyle modifications and everything else. There's um there's those situations for sure, and we need to acknowledge that. I think the angle that I'm getting at here, though, is a lot of times when we're not in those situations, um, I think people lose heart a little bit too soon. They give up a little bit too early, and pain that was temporary or was going to be temporary then becomes permanent. And that's an unfortunate circumstance. But for the record, I don't want anyone thinking that they're listening to some guy who thinks that everyone can always get rid of all their pain, um, particularly through uh therapeutic exercise, um, rehab, conservative um interventions. Now, when there's chronic pain, there is medication, there's there's more involved treatment, there's um ways that you can do nerve ablasions and can just kind of cut off the pain signals and all these other advanced things that you can do. Um there's there's times again where that stuff is necessary, and when, hey, I've done everything for my knee and it's just so arthritic, you know, it's worn out, uh, my hip is so worn out, I need to I need a replacement, right? You got to get a new knee, I gotta get a new hip. There's there's plenty of times like that. But again, uh even in those particular situations, getting joints replaced if there's a degenerative condition, you can often get out of pain with those replacements, or with other parts of the body breaking down. There's higher-level interventions that can uh help to get us out of pain. Not all the times, but again, the the point I'm trying to drive home here is that there are so many times where pain could be completely eliminated and people are on the right track, and they just give up too soon. There's the wrong mindset or the wrong belief that, hey, there's nothing that could be done about this when in fact there could be. And so that kind of brought me to a quote when I was putting these slides together uh by Dr. Eric Thomas, uh, a motivational speaker, uh, if you're unfamiliar with who he is. Uh remarkable story. I like listening to uh his stuff from time to time. And he kind of went viral a number of years ago uh because he was giving a speech, a motivational speech, to like a high school classroom, and someone filmed it. And it was um it was a pretty cool speech to listen to. And I'm gonna read you a quick little quote from that speech. And I believe this is all his own words. I think he was looking at a piece of paper when he was uh reading this, but I think it was more his own notes. But I believe this is all his own words. But in that video, he said to these kids, you know, he said, Hey, listen to me. He said, Pain is temporary, and it may last for a minute or an hour or a day or even a year. But eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it will last forever. Now, he wasn't talking about physical pain and injuries in those conditions. He was talking about more the mental kind of side of the mental discomfort of having to push through uh you know life challenges that uh some of these students were up against. But we can we can easily apply that, I think, to a more literal sense, that uh if we have pain in our body, whether it's just something mild or something that's brand new or a little bit more drawn out, uh, we s maybe we're not gonna get to where we want to be at the end of the day, despite our best efforts, but we're certainly gonna not gonna get anywhere close if we just if we just quit. There's you know, if if if you if you don't have hope, then you know what do you have? And so um I think it's a good quote just to kind of again mentally chew on here as we as we go along with all this. So that really leads us here into the the next kind of aspect of this whole topic that we can pick apart, which is basically knowing what you value. Uh, you know, anytime that you're not in a spot in life that you uh want to be in, something else is you know going on, hey, I'm not in a circumstance or spot that I want to be in in life. Um, I think this what we have to do is maybe take a step back and ask ourselves what we value. And I'll break this down here in a moment. And again, I'm I'm applying this to the physical rehabilitation side of things with orthopedic injuries, you know, physical injuries or physical conditions to the body. But I think we can extrapolate this to other realms of life for that matter, too, if we want. But I think in this whole rehabilitation process, there's numerous value systems that we need to weigh against one another throughout this process. And I think where this all starts is that you must weigh the value of your current well-being and the current quality of life against the current reasons that are enticing you to give up and not perform your rehab. So you want to look at what you value for your future well-being and your future quality of life, and you need to weigh that up against maybe the reasons that are telling you that, hey, this isn't worth it. Uh, hey, I I I don't want to perform my my rehab. Because when you weigh your future well-being and your quality of life, the quality of life that you want, against the current reasons that are telling you to give up, to not put in the effort, one you're gonna find that one's more important to you than the other. And this comes down to this concept of you know, if you really value your future well-being and your future quality of life against the current reasons that tell you you shouldn't uh commit to your rehab. Well, my current reason is I'm just I want to be comfortable in the moment. Uh I want to uh not be physically uncomfortable right now. I want to just not not be physically tired. Well, you have you you basically ultimately have to ask yourself if you are going to sacrifice what you currently are for what you will become. And that concept again comes from that speech I mentioned a moment ago with Eric Thomas, where he told these kids, you know, you you need to be able at any moment sacrifice what you are for what you will become. So you are someone who is in pain, you are someone who is physically limited. But maybe you go, hey, but you know what, I'm not where I want to be, but at least I'm I'm not I'm not comfortable putting in work because it's uncomfortable, it's it's exhausting, it's it's tiring. Well, if you can sacrifice what you are, which maybe right now is comfortable, maybe just kind of laying on the couch and not not making yourself physically uncomfortable, sacrifice that for what you will become. That's an important, it's an important process to go through, I think. And so, you know, just I like giving definitions in these podcast episodes of some of these words that I'm using. And just I think we all know the definition of value, but let's just throw that out there real quick so we we can all understand what what I'm talking about here. So the definition of value, we could talk about it and define it as relative worth, uh, merit, or importance, or we could also define it as the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged, or in terms of some medium of exchange. And again, I kind of like that because I tie that into the concept of sacrificing what you are for what you will become. Now, those definitions came from dictionary.com, just in case you're curious. But so if we look at some examples of comparing values, what I'm talking about here, you might find yourself, and I should say that the examples I'm giving here are kind of ones that I've gathered informally by observing some of my patients and what my patients have told me over the years. Um, so I'm kind of taking years and years of examples that I've seen and kind of bringing them into some general trends and themes in these upcoming examples here. But one example would be asking yourself, do I value my current comfort level more than the ability to one day run around with my kids in the park again? And I've seen that one play out because I've had patients who go, hey, it hurts to do my rehab, or it's physically exhausting, or even emotionally exhausting for that matter. And I would prefer not to put myself through pain in the moment because I don't like being in pain. I don't like feeling exhausted. I don't like having to put in so much effort to get what I feel is a little bit of a reward each time. So you have to ask yourself, do I value that, you know, the comfort that I get out of that more than the ability to maybe one day run around with my kids in the park again? And you know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell people which one's right or wrong. It's it's only you can come up with the answers for what you value more when you kind of weigh current current comfort levels versus future situations. So, do I value avoiding physical discomfort from my rehab routine more than regaining a sense of control over my current circumstances? That's one that I've seen playing out a number of times. People are in uh lousy circumstances because they have physical pain, or their body really is uh has been affected by a disease or a condition. And you have to really get people to ask themselves, okay, well, what is it that you value more? Avoiding physical discomfort in the moment, or regaining that sense of control over your current circumstance. And it's it's interesting because a lot of times I think people know what they value, but they just maybe need to hear it phrased in a different way. And sometimes I have quite a bit of success with that when I know my patients well enough to rephrase things for them and say, hey, what it what it sounds like is there's more value being placed on X than more value being placed on Y. And can make some great progress with people once we start to kind of um kind of pick those things apart. And so again, another example, and these are all very commonly linked together examples. I think you can see there's this general trend of uh you know avoiding discomfort and not putting in work with a physical regimen. Uh, but another example here is do I value staying physically still right now, maybe laying on the couch, more than improving my physical robustness and mental resilience? Because if you value your mental resilience and your physical robustness, well then you say, well, I guess that means that I need to make myself physically uncomfortable, maybe a bit mentally uncomfortable, so that I become stronger through that process. Another example you could use would be: do I value avoiding physical discomfort from my rehab routine more in the present than avoiding discomfort in the future due to improved health? So the concept of, well, I can have comfort now by avoiding strenuous activity, but I'm going to pay the price for that in the future, maybe because my body falls apart a bit quicker, it's deconditioned. Do I value the comfort I get now but pay the price later? Or do I do I value the future comfort now and put myself through discomfort in the moment through my challenging exercise routine, my routine that makes me feel a bit sore or you know, physically tires me out? Have comfort now and pay for it later, or have discomfort now, but then have more comfort in the future. Value systems, right? So another example is do I value seeking mental comfort right now more than prolonging my ability to live independently for as long as possible? I think a lot of us want to live independently for all our days ahead. And we stand a better chance of doing that if our body is physically robust and recovered from injuries, recovered from conditions or diseases that have affected us, or we've at least minimized them. And if that's the case, that for living independently as long as possible, well, if if we're not pushing our body to overcome what we're up against or to keep it strong and healthy and resilient, the chances are very high that as we go along, we're gonna we're gonna have more physical limitations and more pain and disability in the future because we haven't stuck to our exercise regimen, um, you know, our recovery regimen in the present. Uh, one last example to give you here would be do I value my current comfort level more than being a source of inspiration to my friends, family, and loved ones. That's one they see quite a lot. I get a lot of people coming in who they say, hey, I you know, I've got this pain, I've got this injury, this condition. Uh, I want to overcome it, not just for myself, but you know, my I want to instill the value system and the lessons into my kids that they can observe through me, that um we can get through what it is that we're faced against and and inspire my kids in the process. And if you want to maybe be that source of inspiration to those around you, say, hey, look what we can achieve uh with our bodies when we when we commit to working through our physical discomfort and our physical injuries and conditions, do we value being that source of inspiration more than simply just saying, well, it's easier to not do strenuous activities in the moment that are designed to get me stronger and healthier. So hopefully those weren't too simplistic or too repetitive. There's definitely a common theme that I think you can pick up with those. But very um, you know, very common examples that if you I think if you're involved in my line of work, you you if you can read between the lines with a lot of patience, you see those themes play out quite a bit. Now, earlier in the episode, the other thing we talked about was just simply knowing your timelines. Um, where if if you know you have to put in the work and you've got a long way to go in a recovery process of any kind, it's important to know your timelines of what you should expect uh the length of time to be like with all this. So the analogy is that if you're going on a road trip and you don't know how long it's gonna take to get there, a lot of things can happen. I mean, you can start to worry if you've made a wrong turn uh or if you've done something wrong, or you can even you can feel lost. Because if you go, well, hey, I know I'm going on this road trip, but I don't know how long it's gonna take. Well, how do you know if you're on track and on pace or if something just you know uh needs to be reevaluated because something's gone wrong somewhere, you've missed a turn or anything like that. And that analogy is a good one when we're talking about knowing your timelines for your injury recovery process or what it is that you're up against. So I would encourage anyone who knows that they've got a more significant recovery ahead of them, you know, maybe more than just a simple, oh I I sprained my ankle a little bit and it's a little bit sore, which still knowing your timelines for that is very, you know, very important. But if you if you got a lot going on with your body or there's a lot of chronic pain and a nasty condition you're trying to work through, I would say that, you know, I would say it's ensuring that you know the general timelines for your recovery is absolutely essential. And I can't tell you anything about your recovery timelines and how long it should take because I don't know you, I don't know your overall health or the condition that you're up against or the multitude of other factors that can play into it. But if you are able to get an assessment and work with a qualified medical healthcare professional, they can give you some general timelines. And the more you work with them, the more they can really fine-tune those timelines and expectations for you. But, you know, all these timelines, they do vary uh on individual factors based on each individual circumstances. And that's very important to understand because if you say, hey, you know, I'm gonna have to do um I'm gonna get my ACL reconstructed next month. And, you know, I hear it's gonna take nine months or 10 months or 11 months or whatever it might be, you want to know those general timelines. But at the same time, your health condition and your situation and what your body can tolerate and these other factors might change a little bit how long another person who's going through the same procedure might take with theirs. And so if someone has a condition or an injury or a surgery or whatever, and it's the same as yours, but they seem to get through it quicker uh than you. Maybe it's not that you've done anything wrong, but just you have a few more things that your body is working through or situations that make it a bit more challenging for your recovery that you just can't overcome. And so this is where knowing general timelines is good, but you you need to get, if you can, someone to work with you so they can go, oh, yeah, well, Johnny got better quicker than you because you actually have something a little bit different or unique than them. So you're actually right on pace for for where you're at in your recovery. Or, hey, you know what? Yeah, it does look like you're falling a bit behind. Maybe we need to change your regimen a little bit, or maybe need to make some strategy adjustments for your rehabilitation going forward. But that only happens if you get a professional who can evaluate you and work with you in order to do that and make it as accurate as possible. And with that being said, once you know the rough timelines, what you're up against, three months, six months, eight months, you know, whatever, I would say that it's important you monitor your timeline and and track the progress that you're making, because that allows you to then kind of look at, hey, I'm maybe I'm falling a bit behind for where I was expected to be, you know, at that two months in or three months in. And maybe that allows you to then go make some adjustments. Or maybe you go, hey, it looks like I'm right on track of where I want to be, or hey, I'm even ahead of where I was expected to be. If you can track this, then that's where you start to know, it goes back to that road trip analogy. Hey, you know what? I'm I'm eight weeks into this, and I'm not at kind of some of these um key indicators yet of where I should be. I'm not able to achieve these certain things. Maybe I've made a wrong turn. But you only know if you've made a wrong turn, uh wrong turn if you have that roadmap in front of you. So uh really important stuff with with this. And it may sound you know obvious and quite intuitive, but um not everyone just because we know something doesn't mean we know how to effectively uh apply it. So know your know your timelines, work with someone uh who can help you to kind of uh help help you have that understanding so you know um kind of where you're at with your recovery process. And I say that because this is going to lead into the next concept here. Um sometimes we're right on track, but we don't know it. We think, man, I'm putting in all this work and nothing, you know, nothing's changing. I'm falling behind. This this isn't worth it. Nothing is nothing positive is happening. When in fact, actually, if you were aware of the timelines and you're aware of the process, what it would be expected to look like going forward, you would realize, hey, it doesn't look like anything's changing. It doesn't look like anything's getting better, it doesn't feel like anything's getting better, but I'm actually right on track. And that's a huge, huge uh factor in helping people to stay committed to what it is that they're uh that they're up against. It feels less overwhelming because you're um you understand that you're not necessarily doing something wrong just because you don't see or feel those results. You know, the the analogy that comes to mind again is like you you plant a seed and then you water it, and you check back the next day and you're like, well, why isn't anything grown? Have I done something wrong? Did I not water enough? Did I use the wrong soil? Did I water it too much? It's only been a day. You need to understand that it's multiple days go by before you're probably going to see something come up. The ground. And if you're aware of that, you just come back and keep watering it each day, and you just keep checking in on it. And you go, okay, any day now, any day now. And then all of a sudden, sure enough, you see that little plant kind of sprouting up through the soil. I don't know, silly analogy, but but where this all leads me is this whole concept of what people often call three feet from gold. And this is a this is a really powerful one here. So uh and there's a powerful metaphor and image that I'm going to put up on the screen here. Uh, if you're uh listening, I will describe the the image for you. But keep this in mind as you work through the recovery process. And years ago, where I was working at a facility, I actually had this image taped up on the inside of my locker. Uh, not because I was working through a physical injury, but I was working on changing my life situation and I was putting in all this time and effort. And I knew that at any moment I could just be three feet from gold. And we'll talk about this in a moment. Uh so the picture that I'm going to put up on the screen here, uh, I don't know who originally uh drew it, so credit to the original artist. But for for those of you who are listening, I've got an image on the screen, and it's got a picture of two individuals who are tunneling their way uh using a pickaxe going through a tunnel. And it's a side view, so you can see how far through a tunnel each one of these individuals has been kind of um chipping away with this pickaxe. And on the right end of the image, because we're kind of looking at a uh a side view or a cutaway of like the tunnel, we see that there's this massive pile of diamonds, and both of these characters have been tunneling towards it. And the character on top, he's he's got a little bit of ways to go before he gets there, but he is uh you know very enthusiastically swinging his pickaxe to break down the wall of dirt that still exists between him and the diamonds. Now he can't see the diamonds. We're looking at a side view of this image, uh, but he's getting close. And uh he doesn't have the perspective of seeing because he's got the dirt in front of him. But our perspective is we can see the amount of distance he has to go before he hits the diamonds. But underneath, there's a man who looks very, very dejected. And he's actually turned in the opposite direction, walking away from the diamonds. He's looking very defeated. But in this image, the the gentleman on the bottom, he was literally like one swing of his pickaxe away from breaking down the last little layer of dirt and having all the diamonds spill out. But he'll never know how close he was because he can't see it, but we can see it through our perspective. And it's it's a powerful metaphor about knowing that if you're putting in the work and you maybe you don't know when the results are gonna come, you might just be one day away or one action away, or one swing of the pickaxe in this case, away from hitting that jackpot of what it is that you're after. And so maybe for you, the the jackpot is um, you know, getting out of pain, or a notable breakthrough in going, hey, you know, I can move a bit better, this hurts a bit less. And this ties back into the timelines we were talking about a minute ago, because so many times people they are right on track for making a breakthrough with their recovery, but they didn't know their timelines. And they said, Well, man, I'm probably still a mile away from the next goal, or I'm, you know, I've done something wrong. And so they become the gentleman on the bottom who was one swing away from a breakthrough, and he's turned around, giving up and walking back in the other direction. And an example that comes to mind here is just, you know, if you've listened to the previous episodes, you know I've about five weeks ago, uh I broke a couple of ribs and it was incredibly painful. And I'm on week five and a half now, basically. Uh, and for the timelines of how I'm feeling and what I'm able to do now, I'm I'm right on track. I can't do everything yet, but I'm feeling like I can start to get back into my workouts. I got to modify some stuff. I still have some tenderness, and a couple of things still don't feel great. But all in all, when you look at the timelines of what specifically happened with me, with what to be expected for this far into the journey, I'm right on pace. And that's good because I don't have to go, hey, I have I done something wrong. Am I have I really screwed something up? Um, maybe back in week three, if I didn't know the timelines, I'll go, well, why am I still having all this pain? And then maybe I start to get some mental anxiety around that. But because I know my timelines of this, yeah, week two is still painful. Week three still wasn't great. But I knew that for where I was at in those moments, that was to be expected. So you might be three feet from gold. You might be one swing away, especially when you know your timelines and you know what you're up against. So if you want a powerful little metaphor of all this, just Google image search the phrase three feet from gold, uh and you'll you'll see this image that I'm talking about. So you might just be one swing away from hitting that jackpot and getting all those diamonds uh pouring out all over you. Now, here's another tip when it comes to how to stick with your exercise regimen, your uh injury rehab regimen. Uh, and this is a simple one and it sounds really straightforward and it's effective. And believe it or not, in the world of injury rehabilitation and exercise uh regimen rehab, it's pretty underutilized. And that's simply to block, block off the time of day whenever you need to in your schedule for when you're gonna do your routine. Maybe you have a 20-minute exercise routine you got to do, maybe it's a 30-minute or even a 10-minute, but pencil it in into your schedule and and block it off. When you think about it, we often block off time in our schedules uh for workout routines or our you know our work routines or family routines or family events. And so the question becomes well, then just why not do that for your rehab routine? And it's a powerful thing to do because what happens is, you know, you you can claim that time as your own. Hey, today from 3 to 3:30, I'm gonna do my home regimen exercise routine, or you know, I'm gonna, you know, do my routine uh in the gym or at the clinic, wherever it's gonna be. But now that time is your time. You've scheduled it in, you're kind of keeping yourself accountable, but then no one else can steal your time, you know, barring some really unexpected big emergency thing you got to deal with. If someone says, Hey, can you do this for me right now? You say, No, I'm I'm busy for the next half hour. Um, I'll do it after or whatever, but you you claim your time and just simply just by putting it in your schedule. And then if you can keep that consistent, we are creatures of habit, you might just find that your just body and your mind getting that routine of, hey, it's three o'clock, it's time to do my regimen, and it kind of feels weird if I don't do it. So, you know, any type of routine, a fitness routine, a strength routine, a cardio routine, or in this case, you know, an injury rehabilitation routine, um, these require deliberate action. And if we turn them into consistent and sustainable habits, um then we need to be intentional in how we shape these pursuits. Uh rather than just being haphazard and saying, oh, I don't know, I I guess I'll do I guess I'll do my exercise in 20 minutes and you know something happens and you're not able to get around to it. Uh we getting better requires deliberate action. And this goes back to that quote at the start of the episode where the level of intensity will dictate the level of sacrifice. So pencil it in. It sounds silly, but um it can make a big difference for people. Now there's a trap that people can fall into, and I've talked about this one, I think, a couple of times on other episodes with various aspects of working to reclaim some aspect of our health and wellness. Uh, I titled this slide stinking thinking, because we just we think about things the wrong way sometimes. And so there's this trap when it comes to the um the effort we have to put in for an exercise regimen of some type, uh, or uh a therapeutic regimen of some type, whatever it's going to be. We get this what what we call the all or nothing trap, which uh drastically, it's a type of thinking that drastically interferes with our consistency and our commitment to, in this case, our rehabilitation efforts. And so the all or nothing trap just basically says, Well, I don't have um the ability right now to do my entire regimen, so it's just clearly it's not worth it. But realistically, something is better than nothing. So maybe you got four or five exercises you have to do, or four or five, you know, movements or whatever it's got to be for part of your injury or condition rehab. Well, doing one of them is a lot better than doing nothing. And I struggle with all or nothing thinking all the time with my training. I go, well, I don't have 45 minutes, I only have 20, and so it's can't do all the things I want to do. Which sure, maybe doing all of it would be more ideal in uh in the context of how we're looking at this. But something is better than nothing because you will stimulate your body to some extent, but also it just helps with what I call mental momentum, meaning it just keeps that behavioral process going where you are still taking action, even if it's not for a whole routine and it's only one exercise or two exercises. That that keeps you mentally going. It fosters that behavioral uh consistency that we want to make for ourselves. And so with this whole all-or-nothing trap, there's really two common culprits for why we often don't perform uh our rehab routines. Or you can say for general health and wellness routines and you know, going to the gym and just doing general fitness exercises. But with injury rehab, uh, it's also largely the same. So the first reason is just time. So a lack of time is actually one of the most often cited reasons for failing to remain consistent with health and wellness routines, um, and again, often the case with rehabilitation routines as well. And then the second most common one is a lack of energy. So it's another incredibly uh commonly reported reason for failing to adhere to health and wellness routines. And again, same for rehabilitation routines as well. Now, those aren't the only culprits. Other ones can be hey, I'm I'm not doing these exercises because I don't want these, like, what am I supposed to achieve with this? My therapist told me to do this. I don't know why, I don't know what these objectives are. Um, and so sometimes people don't want to do exercises because their objectives are unclear, or their expectations um aren't accurate. Maybe they don't understand that some pain with an exercise is actually good, depending on the situation, and they say, well, it hurts to do this, so I should probably shouldn't do it. Or again, we can think back to the timelines analogy where, hey, I've been putting all this work and effort with this stupid routine and I don't seem to be making progress. When actually they're about to have a big breakthrough, they just don't understand the timelines. Or maybe an exercise feels too difficult, and no one wants to do something if it feels too difficult. So there's lots of reasons. But if nothing else, avoiding the whole, hey, uh, I'm not going to do any of my routine because of time or energy or exercise objectives or whatever, um, exercise expectations. I would encourage you, if you're struggling with this, just to do one exercise. Take five minutes, take ten minutes, whatever it takes. But if nothing else, maybe you don't get as much physical stimulation out of it that you otherwise would with your whole routine. But you're building a really, really good mental ability to create a behavioral change to create that consistency. And then you will have the days where, hey, I do have the time, I do have the energy, and you'll power your way through and you'll you'll be able to be able to, you know, to do the entire regimen that you need to be doing. Now, that being said, so this last kind of tip that we're doing doing here ties in perfectly to that all or nothing concept. So this is where we get into the concept of moneymaker exercises. If you only have time or energy to do one exercise instead of all three or all four or whatever it's going to be, simply pick the one that gives you the biggest bang for your buck. And you'll know which one gives you the biggest bang for your buck if you do your full routine a handful of times. You'll likely intuitively feel for yourself, yeah, this one just feels good, or I feel like this one just for some reason does the most good for me. Or I feel like it, I just I feel better after I do it. And you don't need to know why that is, but uh there there are these are there's high yield exercises that we tend to find uh when people have routines, or a higher yield exercise than other exercises uh or movements for that matter. And so a high yield exercise for you, or a moneymaker exercise, might be something that just really helps to reduce your pain or the symptoms that you're experiencing. You know, maybe, oh, my knee gets really stiff, or my neck is really tight, or my neck is really tight and painful. You might, if you're working with a healthcare professional, you might have a series of exercises and you find that one just kind of does the most, more so than any of them, for reducing pain or reducing symptoms. Or you might find that if your regimen is tailored around functional improvement, so having the ability to get your body to function as you would like it to, there might be one particular exercise that you find just helps the most with your strength and endurance. Maybe you've got a leg or legs that are a bit weak and you find, well, I got these different exercises, but this one exercise, I just I feel like I get the most out of it, or it helps, you know, it helps me be able to move my knee better, or it helps me be able to move my hip better, more so than the other ones. Now, the hope would be, I should mention that everything that you have in your regimen you feel is helpful in some capacity. You don't need to know which ones, you know, like maybe 10% more ideal than another one, but you don't want to be feeling like you got all these exercises that you're doing and none of them help in any capacity. Typically, people will have certain ones that they feel are less effective or harder to tell if they're effective than others. But you should you hopefully at least feel that you know the exercises that you have all contribute something to this whole uh rehabilitative regimen that you're going through. But when we talk about that functional improvement, you might find that there's that one exercise that again, every time I do this one movement, my back feels way less stiff compared to other exercises and movements that I have going for me. Or, you know, if your functional improvement is based around improving your movement control, maybe you got a movement condition or a movement disorder, you just find that, hey, this one activity or this one little drill or exercise I have to do, it just helps me be able to control my movement a bit better. And so in any of those scenarios, like those, like that's a moneymaker exercise. Or you might find that something helps with what you call your movement capacity, just your overall ability uh to move and get a certain amount of work done, it's the same deal. You might have one exercise for something like that. And the little pro tip to give here with this is that you know what I'm referring to here is basically kind of what we call this this 80-20 rule, where a lot of times you will have something where 80% of the outcomes that you're after can be gained from only 20% of the inputs. In this case, an input an input is an exercise, and an output is the symptom reduction or the pain reduction, or the output is the functional improvement. And so if you have one or two exercises that can really give you 80% of your outcomes for only 20% of the inputs, that's pretty good. Now you still unfortunately need to work on the other 20% of the inputs that will give you, or the other 80% of the inputs that will give you the 20% of the outputs. But the whole concept of this 80-20 rule can be really important for it, just ties into this general concept of these money maker exercises. So uh, you know, you can read up more on that principle if you want. But I think I've beaten the uh beaten the point home on this one. But I'll give you some examples here. So just based on various scenarios. If you're fresh out of surgery, for example, oftentimes you've had a surgery in the hospital, they're gonna try and get you up and walking uh sooner rather than later. Um, so when you're cleared to do so. But this is high yield for one activity because moving after a surgery when appropriate, it does a lot of good for helping to prevent further complications uh with multiple systems in the body, reduced chances of pneumonia and bed sores and kind of muscle atrophy. There's a lot of uh good benefits of just, you know, maybe you go, I don't feel like walking right now. I just got home from surgery. Um they gave me all these exercises to do. Yeah, maybe just walk if it's appropriate for you to do so. Another great example that a lot of my patients will often mention for various injuries and conditions is uh like you know, going to a pool and doing some aqua therapy where they will simply walk and uh walk through water or do what we call water running, where they're doing a running motion, but you know, they're only waist deep in a pool. And for a lot of people, this can be high yield because it gives them a lot of combined effects of you know, getting their heart rate up, so cardiovascular activity, but it's giving them a lot of cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. Maybe it's helping with mobility of knees and hips moving, but it's high yield because it doesn't make their back sore in the process or their arthritic knee, doesn't have to worry about the effects of gravity with their knee pounding into the ground as they're trying to run to get their heart rate up. Again, this is not the case for everyone. These are merely examples. But another example could be for people who are trying to regain strength in some capacity for their muscles, looking at doing a what we call a compound movement versus an isolated movement. So a compound movement just means we're doing a strengthening exercise for our muscles, but in the process, we're actually strengthening multiple muscles or groups of muscles, whereas an isolated movement would be we're strengthening one muscle at a time. So maybe you've got an exercise regimen as part of your exercise rehabilitation for, let's say, your shoulder or your arm, where you've got different strengthening exercises you have to do for your muscles. Well, maybe, maybe you're short on time and you said, well, hey, I'm not gonna fall into the all or nothing trap, but I need to do one exercise out of my regimen I have that gives me the biggest bang for my buck. Well, maybe you pick an exercise in your regimen, maybe it's like what we call like an underhand row where you grab a band or you grab some form of resistance and you pull that weight or resistance closer towards you, which moves your entire arm as well as your shoulder and your upper back, and you stimulate multiple muscles that way, versus let's say an isolated biceps curl where you hold a weight by your side and you simply bend your elbow and curl the weight upwards. You know, maybe you have that in your regimen as well, and that's still good to do, but you can do that rolling exercise and stimulate multiple groups of muscles all throughout your arm and shoulder with that one movement rather than just purely isolating the biceps curl. Now, there's times where an isolated movement is actually more ideal than a compound movement. So again, we're just throwing out some very basic concepts here. Now, same concept where we can think about if we needed to do some stretch, stretching or mobility. We can do full body stretches versus maybe isolated stretches. So instead of um just doing a stretch for the shoulder, we can do a stretch for the entire upper body, where we put ourselves into a position where if it's appropriate for you, you would stretch your shoulder, but maybe a little bit of your middle back and your lower back as well, and maybe even your neck. But then taking a step further and doing a stretch where you stretch your entire upper body and lower body at the same time. Think of a lot of different yoga poses or those types of positions. Maybe that's much more high yield for you for your situation or circumstance. Or another example here would be replicating what we call functional tasks or activities of daily living. So, you know, a functional task or an activity of daily living here, we would just say is something that a movement you have to do as part. of your day-to-day lifestyle. It's something that can be as simple as you know bending over to pick something off the floor or reaching up into the cabinet high up with your arm to grab what it is that you need to get out of the cabinet. And so rather than just doing one little movement to strengthen your shoulder and then doing a stretch for your shoulder, you do a movement that you have to do on a daily basis that is a bit challenging for you. But in that in that challenge you maybe gain a bit better mobility. It's a bit of a stretch or it's a bit of a strengthening exercise at the same time. So come comes down to if you struggle with a task in your activity of daily living, well maybe you just practice that one. Maybe you go, yeah, I just I struggle with going up and down stairs. I feel like it's a little taxing and tiring for me. Well if appropriate for you to do so maybe that's just what you do for your money maker exercise because that has a high specificity of improving what it is that you struggle with. Or one final example here would be a combination of a strength and mobility exercise where I'm going to gear this one towards more someone who's just doing a general home exercise strength training routine. But in the world of home strengthening or strengthening exercises, whether you're doing a workout at home or in a gym, you can do movements that challenge your not just your strength but your mobility at the same time things like overhead squats or exercises like reverse nordic curls or one that we call maybe a Turkish getup. Point being I'm getting long-winded here is that there's ways where we can combine different factors of what we need to improve into one simple movement that just challenges everything together. And that's very high yield, right? Moneymaker exercise where within a couple of minutes we've actually achieved quite a bit for the body. And then naturally we have this concept of what we call the low-hanging fruit. So the low hanging fruit simply refers to something that is easy to obtain or can be achieved with little effort. And when it comes to your exercise regimens and what it is that you're after for rehabilitation and sticking with your routines knowing the low hanging fruit that you can go after can help in numerous ways. So it can help with consistency and behavior which we've talked about where you know you go I don't have the time or effort or I don't have the time and energy to to do my entire routine but you go you know what like I can do this one I can take this one particular action it's easy and it it will help with my pain. Or I can I can do this one little thing it's pretty easy to do. I can make this one little change to my daily routine and that will help with helping me feel like I have control over my situation or help decrease some of the symptoms that I am experiencing. So it can also help with provide a sense of control because maybe you're feeling very overwhelmed and you go this is I got so much going on here it's just it almost feels defeating. Well if you have something that you can easily obtain or achieve with a little amount of effort you can start to go hey look at that I've made some progress and it wasn't even all that difficult to do so. Now maybe it's not a ton of progress and it's a very modest amount but point being is you know that you can you can make some type of change with just a little bit of effort because you've grabbed the lowest hanging fruit off the tree. And that in and of itself can provide you with a profound sense of accomplishment. And it's okay to be proud of yourself for making progress no matter how small or kind of incremental the progress may be it's that sense of accomplishment it encourages you to keep going right it's no one wants to be spinning their wheels feeling like they can't make any progress and when you feel like you've got control over some element of your situation and you feel that you have a sense of accomplishment that is some profoundly powerful fuel that will keep you motivated and going and sticking with your exercise regimen or your therapeutic rehab regimen. And so all that does is it helps you to maintain progress rather than just stopping giving up because you feel like you can't make a change or you don't have any control you've now created a consistent and behavior based ability to work on what it is that you're overcoming you've got this sense of control you've got a sense of accomplishment and that helps you maintain the progress it keeps you on the you know on the on the course and keeps you charted on the uh the path that you need to be going. So go after that low-hanging fruit whatever it is whether it's a simple exercise or whether it's something that helps from a mental standpoint or helps in any other sort of aspect of your regimen and it'll help carry you through what you're up against. So low-hanging fruits here's a couple of great examples deep breathing and mindfulness when you feel overwhelmed or frustrated calms down your nervous system relaxes you it's easy you can do it anytime anywhere pretty much and you just breathe deep and you work on kind of grounding yourself in the moment through different mindfulness techniques. You can read up on deep breathing and mindfulness if you want to learn more about it. But if you feel overwhelmed and frustrated simple little thing you can do very powerful for the body helpful for the mind as well maybe you've got some pain and some symptoms and so you simply use a hot pack for helping reduce some pain or improve your movement if it's a chronic longstanding injury. You got a stiff knee or a stiff hip or a stiff back you find hey I just I put a hot pack on there at the end of the day 20 minutes and oh man I do feel a lot better and I do feel like I can move better for a little bit after that. That's a great low-hanging fruit or conversely maybe it's an ice pack that you use for helping reduce pain and swelling if it's a brand new injury very easy low-hanging fruit to pluck off the tree or maybe you're you know too tired for physical exertion you're feeling really exhausted so rather than do your therapeutic regimen uh you just go for a short or a long walk because you're feeling fatigued again that that that movement of just walking and moving depending on your situation circumstance could be a great thing to do. Another example how about having an exercise that you can perform while you lay in bed maybe you got really tight calves or you got some other stuff going on and you can do exercises of what we call ankle pumps where you're just pulling and pushing your ankles up and down to kind of get some movement in your calves, circulate some blood through there, work on some tension or laying in bed do an exercise called a pelvic tilt, which is designed to reduce low back tension and low back discomfort. I tell my patients all the time when I give them pelvic tilts, there's always at least two times a day you can perform these exercises. You can perform them for a couple minutes before you get out of bed and you can perform them for a couple minutes right before you go to bed. Easy little things to do that can have surprisingly therapeutic effects and you just have to lay there and just do a very simple movement. Or the last one I'll give you here is performing imagery exercises when you're laying down or you're sitting at a table. So an imagery exercise just refers to the process of you visualizing you know a specific movement or activity or imagining yourself going through that movement or activity and what it might feel like. That can do a whole lot in terms of all sorts of things from reducing anxiety about movement or activity to again actually helping pain. I got an episode coming up on we call graded motor imagery when pain doesn't play by the rules and imagery exercises are profoundly beneficial for that. So imagining movements and seeing seeing images of movements and visualizing certain aspects of movement can be very very beneficial. Won't get into the details of that but just a quick example of a low-hanging fruit so here's your key takeaways with all of this now I've got all that yammering out of the way number one when it comes to this whole sticking with rehabilitative regimens and not giving up remind yourself that you're doing something difficult because it's easier to keep moving forward when we acknowledge the difficulty. Number two is to compare and contrast what you value. So knowing what you value will help determine what help you determine what matters which can help you stay on track. Takeaway number three is to know your timelines. A basic understanding of your expected recovery timelines will help ensure that you don't give up when you're three feet from gold. Takeaway number four is simply block off you know rehab time in your schedule because if you don't have the time if you block it off you likely will. So people can't steal your time if you've blocked off beforehand. And it's your time so honor it. Number five was to avoid all or nothing thinking because something is almost always better than nothing when it comes to taking action and staying consistent and making the progress that you want to make. Number six know your moneymaker exercises focus on the 20% of the inputs that will yield you 80% of your outputs very powerful strategy. Number seven grab the lowest hanging fruit off the tree whenever you can because quick easy victories are motivating and they help us to feel a sense of power and control over our rehab situation. With that being said I appreciate you sticking around throughout this episode I talk a lot in these episodes I don't know if you guys want shorter or longer episodes I put these slides together and I don't know how long it'll be because I usually just I get so caught up in sharing my uh my insights with this and I really am passionate about this. But if you've made it to the end and first of all thank you very much. If you feel you've gotten something helpful out of this episode please consider leaving a review or if you got something helpful out of other episodes for that matter. If you feel others could benefit from this episode please feel free to share it with them. And if you do want to follow me or learn more about what I'm doing and the content I'm creating uh I'm on I'm also on YouTube and Instagram for those of you who are listening to the audio versions of this podcast. You can find me at Strength Resurgence that is my handle for both YouTube and Instagram and if you do want to support this little project of mine you could buy me a coffee over on buymeacoffee.com the just a couple of dollars a little donation goes a long way helps me offset the costs and expenses I incur with running my website which is strengthresurgence.com by the way if you want to read a bunch of blog articles that I've typed up over the years on similar topics. But if you do want to buy me a coffee help support me in these pursuits uh you could do so over at buymeacoffee.com slash resurgence R-E-S-U-R-G-E-N-C-E. That'd mean the world to me. But what would mean even more for me is um just to you know make some good stuff happen for yourself uh because I care about you and that's ultimately what I want for you. So I'm gonna end the episode like I always do. Keep looking after yourselves keep looking after one another keep making great things happen and I'll see you in the next episode.