I think the most common thing I hear in the clinic is “I must be getting old”. A couple of months ago I found myself thinking and saying the same thing. You see, I properly twinged my lower back and found myself defaulting to this way of thinking, that my joints and muscles weren’t feeling as good or keeping up with what I was doing as much as they used to. The truth is this injury has nothing to do with getting old and mine was most likely (definitely) the result of over enthusiastic sciatic nerve stretches, helping Hayden do heavy dump runs followed by shoveling and wheelbarrowing loads of gravel. In fact, 85% of people will experience this injury at some point. Although maybe not by doing something that silly, realistically I am doing well to get this far without experiencing any significant pain or injuries.

When people come to see a physio, we get them to describe what they are feeling. This is always very interesting, and we get some amazing descriptors. Countless times I’ve heard people describe a toothache in their back when they’re trying to sleep, catching electric pain into a leg and sensations like ants crawling over their skin. When I tweaked my back, I was experiencing these things myself and initially I found it interesting to relate to pains and sensations I have had described to me so many times. Physios are weird like that. Overall, I felt prepared to deal with it. Lucky for me I work in the perfect place and knew I needed to manage it with a bit of rest, some hands-on treatment and lots of heat.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the feelings of disheartenment and frustration when it wasn’t improving as fast as I wanted. I kept trying to do things that my body wouldn’t allow. Despite my experience as a physio, I kept pushing too hard, too fast and re-tweaking my pain. All I could see was the things I couldn’t do like running and gardening. I knew that normally, healing timeframes for pain to settle with an injury like this is 4-6 weeks, but I thought I could accelerate it. Surprise, surprise, I had to learn the lesson a lot of our patients learn, to stop and rest then gently work my way back to movement and exercise. I could so easily see how this doesn’t happen and with the feelings of disheartenment and frustration and a lack of knowledge of what to do with it can easily end up in a cycle of tweak, pain, anger, tweak, pain, anger. This is why it is very easy to throw your hands up and fall back on something you will have heard over and over - “I must be old now, I guess I can’t run anymore because I have a bad back”.

Overall, this experience has made me a much better physio. I can relate to patients on a deeper level. When I hear “I must be getting old” I can better understand the feelings of disheartenment and frustration. When I see similar presentations, I know what’s worked for me, what doesn’t work and how to wade through frustrations relating to return to exercise or sport or gardening.

At Physique, we provide the guidance you need for pain and injuries, minor or major. We figure out what’s going on, what’s happened to cause it, where you are at the moment and where you want to go. If you are feeling frustrated at your body, or feeling the same things tweak over and over and feeling like ‘this must be getting old’ you do not have to figure it out on your own.