backpackerphysio

💪🏼 NO PAIN, NO GAIN 💪🏼

Origin of that comes from pushing yourself to the limit and beyond to achieve or surpass a goal you set for yourself 🥳

But applying that principle to rehabbing an injury isn’t the best idea 🙅🏼‍♂️

Imagine you have acute knee pain. There’s likely inflammation there. If you keep on doing the SAME things that irritates that injury it’s like trying to put a fire out by pouring gasoline on it ⛽️

Likewise, if you keep going to the point during a gradual, progressive rehab programme into a range, hold duration, or weight measurement that causes true PAIN, then although you may be intending to try take a shortcut, you’re just going to end up back to square one…or even further from recovery 🤷🏼‍♂️

When getting back to exercising, if you’re feeling some low level discomfort during an exercise, but that dissipates as soon as you finish, that’s okay ✅

Remember your rest days too- in terms of tendon related injuries (appreciate that’s pretty generalised), then I’d usually recommend 4-5 days working, 2-3 days resting 🙌🏼

And as per…don’t forget to get a varied, natural diet in you, plenty of protein to aid tissue recovery, keeping hydrated and enjoy yourselves…as long as it’s not gonna p**s of your injury site too much 🫠

💊 ANTIBIOTICS 💊

The face of a man after he’s had his wisdom teeth yanked out 🫠

On the soup, Netflix and ice cream diet for a few days and not allowed to treat or exercise until next week 😬

So, post surgery you gotta take a weeks course of antibiotics to stop the old empty gummy bits from going weird and infected 🦷

There’s a pretty significant relationship between mental health and taking antibiotics- increase of approx 20-30% in major depressive episode after taking 1 course in a calendar year 🤔

And 44% increase if you’re taking 2 courses! 😳

You’ve got about 1kg of bacteria named your microbiome in your gut that plays a big old role in maintenance of loads of things- including your immune system 🦠

I guess key takeaway:

Look after yourself (stating the bleeding obvious I know) 🤷🏼‍♂️

But you don’t want to be getting into situations with multiple infections, or an infection that needs multiple treatments with antibiotics as your gut will not thank you for it which leads to mental and physical health slippery slopes 😰

P.s It’s coming home 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

🍿 An Open Letter to Cinema Popcorn 🍿

Thanks for hijacking my day today, Cinema Popcorn. I was supposed to be productive but after I met you last night, I slept crap and whether it’s your fault or not, I haven’t gone to the toilet like usual. I’ve had no energy and so I couldn’t think of anything to do a proper reel about either. You’re out of line. 🍿

I only ordered a small version of you, Cinema Popcorn, but when you were given to me, you were bigger than my torso. No other food is served in your size, how do you get away with it? 🍿

In fact, Cinema Popcorn, I never even crave you until I see you. And how are you so moreish? I bet you’ve got loads of chemicals as well as that sugar that I go on about and I’ve fallen straight into that trap too haven’t I 🍿

I don’t understand your pricing either, Cinema Popcorn. Why are smalls, mediums and larges pretty much the same price. What on Earth are you up to? Literally no other food does that 🍿

I hope we never cross paths again, Cinema Popcorn. You’re not a meal and I always feel guilty after seeing you for the sheer mass of stuff that I’ve eaten. 🍿

Become a reasonable size, Cinema Popcorn. For everyone’s sake 🍿

Happy 🧠

Ironically, suffering a little with my own today BUT the ratio of bad to good days is WAY better than the last WMHD 😬

I enjoy learning about mental health and how we can manage our own far more in the last 18 months and feel it’s really benefitted people I work with too 🤓

I’m going to continue to post about managing stress and associates wider components of health other than just exercises as I feel if we just focus on physical symptoms (which physios are naturally known for) then we’re significantly limiting how much we can help people 🤷🏼‍♂️

In other words, it’s like doing a car MOT and only really checking tyre pressure- it’s not going to tell the whole story 🚗

I’ve shared some really useful accounts/posts in my story too- it’s okay not to be okay 👍🏻

✍🏻The Power of Words 📖

Having fewer concepts or words to differentiate discrete negative emotions is associated with higher levels of depression after stressful life events (Starr et al. 2020)

One type of journal entry that I’ve been trying recently involves writing down your thoughts, current emotions, how your feeling physically and your recent behaviour which I got from book ‘Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?’- really helpful book for giving practical tips on managing your mental health 🧠

Anyway, often my mind goes blank whenever I’m trying to work out what emotion I’m feeling 😵‍💫

Using this Feeling Wheel (Wilcox 1982) helps to label the emotions and let you explore how you’re doing in that moment rather than just being ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ 🤓

Save this post to help give a bit more clarity for when you’re doing a regular check in ✅

🧘🏼‍♀️ SPIRITUAL REST 🧘🏼‍♂️

The last and by no means least form of rest we need in our lives 😌

It’s taken me years (and I’m still getting to grips with this!) to understand how having a connection beyond just the mental and physical, to find a deeper sense of purpose and presence can help to revive us 🥲

DEFINITELY at the start of my career I’d have been a lot more cynical about this but I truly do believe it’s vital for us and ‘not having time’ to get present without bodies and our surroundings isn’t an excuse 🙅🏼‍♂️

Regular meditation and yoga practices offer this, as well as getting outside without your headphones and just, I dunno, being 🤷🏼‍♂️

This repost from is a beautiful articulation (that’s way better than I could come up with) can hopefully illustrate how stopping, taking a moment and checking in with ourselves regularly can have profound effects on us 🙂

I actually pinched this from story. Emma is an incredibly experienced yoga teacher based in London doing online classes for all levels and is part of the group who provide free classes- I’d recommend you check out all the mentioned posts for further snippets of mindfulness and spiritual wellbeing tips 🙌🏼

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Everyone at Backpackerphysio would like to thank all the well wishers for their messages on the day where I dip more of my foot into the thirties 🤓