D.A.R.N Exercise

The summer holidays are over for most and the kids are back at school. A new academic year is upon us. Over the summer break, it is easy to fall out of the usual routine, especially your fitness routine. This is not uncommon. As much as Christmas and New Year are often a catalyst to start new fitness goals, the summer break can be an opportunity to take your foot off the gas, change gear and for some, stop entirely.

Maybe you needed a brief period of rest. Maybe your Pilates instructor doesn’t offer classes during the holidays. Maybe the sporting season was essentially over, and it was difficult to arrange a game of tennis or squash or football with everyone being on holidays. Maybe you could allow yourself to be less rigid with your routine over the holidays and mix things up for a few weeks. For whatever reason, perhaps you’ve lost some of that drive to get back to your fitness routine. The question is what do you do now?

Over the years in clinic, we see many people who are a bit boom and bust with their approach to physical activity. Regular readers of these posts will know the philosophy we adopt here of Buckets and Hexagons and how all of that corelates to the health and wellbeing of your current and future self and of course your ultimate mentor. Your Pain system.

As I’ve said many times before. We have a finite amount of capacity in the bucket, but we also have infinite distractions and seductions fighting for our limited resources. When that bucket overflows, our body will let us know and we will experience many sensations from fatigue, frustration, anger, resentment, envy, nihilism and pain. Migraine, back pain flare ups, that dodgy knee “goes again”. The Health Hexagon are the six things that determine how much the bucket fills and empties and therefore if it overflows. Those 6 things are Sleep, Diet, Physical load, Cognitive Load, Emotional Load and the Spiritual offloading.

As I’ve said already, we see many people over the years in clinic who are a bit boom and bust with their approach to physical activity and this is why the summer break can mean they get out of their fitness routine. These are likely to be the same people who by Christmas decide it’s time to set yet another new year’s resolution; that next year will be different.

Committing to regular exercise can be difficult. In fact, it can be D.A.R.N difficult.

A couple of years ago I came across a book called Motivational interviewing in Healthcare by Stephen Rollnick, William Miller & Christopher Butler. It explained the DARN model when it comes to motivational change which I’m going to explain in relation to the physical wing of your Health Hexagon. So, let’s go step by step

D is for Desire. Do you have a desire to get and stay fit? Think of it this way. There is a massive difference between someone who seeks help for drug and/or alcohol addiction versus someone who goes to a rehab service because they are mandated by the courts to do so or because of a family intervention. We all know that the person who decides they need and seek help as they themselves desire a different future are much more likely to be successful. We’ll come back to desire in a bit.

A is for Ability. The vast majority of people have oodles of ability. Most people are not in a hospital bed or a prison cell or a slave labour camp. They have autonomy over their choices. The stories we tell ourselves as to why we can’t do this or that are often self-imposed barriers we put in our own way. We are too busy, or we don’t have time. The next step is the key.

R is for Reason. This is the big one and links back to desire and ability. You need a reason to make the tough choices. To prioritise. To put boundaries in place for yourself. Our purpose as a clinic is to look after your 85-year-old self (and beyond). Ask yourself, will your 85-year-old-self thank you for the choices you make today. Will they thank you for getting the formula right in the physical wing of your health hexagon. But also pay attention to your current self. When you engage in physical activity pay attention to the immediate or short-term benefits as well as the knowledge that you are working on your 85-year-old-self. When you exercise you will likely feel more energised, less stressed, a little virtuous, physically and mentally sharper. By committing to your exercise routine, you are getting your priorities in order. You are not a slave to the inbox. Remember it’s not work-life balance. It’s all life. Finding and paying attention to a reason(s) is the key.

Finally,

N is for Need. What do you need to be successful? Maybe you need accountability, so you sign up and pre-pay for a bunch of sessions with a personal trainer. Maybe you need a goal or a challenge like a charity race to train for. Maybe you need to be part of something bigger than yourself like a team or a league or a class. Maybe you need a friend to call at your door and drag you to whatever it is. Maybe you need to acknowledge that the approach you’ve taken up to now, that lead to a cycle of boom and bust isn’t working so you need to dig a bit deeper for a reason.

A story I often tell to illustrate the above is about an American lady who tried may ways of keep fit. She did many of the above. Personal trainers, classes, signed up for charity events. All the usual but always boom and bust. Then she discovered a website where she had to pledge to do a physical activity. She chose walking for 1 hour a day everyday for a year. The website demanded that she deposit $1000 into an escrow account as a security deposit for her pledge. If she failed to walk on a particular day, she would lose something like $50. Fifty dollars isn’t nothing, but you could understand perhaps that one could forgo $50 if the weather was atrocious or work was particularly intense. But here is the clever thing about this website. Not only would she lose the $50 but she also had to nominate in advance an organisation that would get the $50 that she really didn’t like. She chose the NRA (National Rifle Association of America). She hated gun culture and no matter how much she didn’t want to go for a walk she absolutely despised the NRA and would not under any circumstances given them a single cent. There were many days she could have told herself that she was too busy to go for her walk. A myriad of excuses. The thought of funding the NRA superseded all of them. She needed the stick rather than the carrot.

The great thing about that story is that walking everyday made her realise it is a choice. It also helped her discover the reasons to keep on doing it beyond the motivation of her detest for the NRA. By walking every day, she discovered it helped her stress levels, her sleep cycle, her headaches, her digestion, her mood, her thinking, her engagement with something bigger than herself. In summary her Health Hexagon.

Now she no longer needs the NRA as a motivator. She sees her daily walk as a fundamental of how she manages her life. It’s not even a choice of if she’ll go for a walk or not, it’s a priority for her current and future self and as normal as brushing her teeth. Everything else can come second.

If you have fallen out off your exercise routine as a result of the summer break or you have been struggling with getting going in the first place. Go through the DARN approach for yourself. If you are reading this, you more than likely have desire to work on your health and wellbeing. You also know that you have loads of ability. There is a fair chance you are at least halfway there already. Like me and most of the people we see here, you probably do want to look after your 85-year-old-self. So, you already have at least one reason but is that a strong enough reason to keep you going on a wet cold Tuesday night in November? Keep paying attention to the multitude of reasons that come with getting your Health Hexagon in order. And the last thread that pulls it together. Ask yourself What do you need to be successful? Then go about organising that need. Your 85-year-old-self will thank you for doing some D.A.R.N Exercise.

If you want to learn why pain can offer the secrets to your health and wellbeing read Pain: The Ultimate Mentor, available in print, ebook & audiobook from all the usual outlets.