Exercise Gone Wrong Makes Me Think About How Lucky I Am

Have you ever pulled your back out? I pulled mine out.

I am pretty sure I did something wrong while exercising two days ago and yesterday the lower back hurt a lot.

You know what it is like. The simple things in life become quite hard. Getting off the couch becomes a whole ordeal where you have twist to the side, brace yourself with one hand on the couch and push yourself up sideways. Not fun. Staying in one spot for any length of time becomes dangerous as your body seems to "lock" into position making it hard to move.

I am really lucky this time though because the back is much better today.

As I reflect on my day of quasi immobility, however, I cannot help but think about how fortunate I am. Fortunate that experiences like that amount to a few days in my life when some live in chronic pain.

It seems to me that we cannot control everything that happens to our bodies but we can take as preventative approach as possible. How do we do that? It is the same old thing. Eat healthy and exercise. Sounds like a broken record...or maybe a sermon...doesn't it?

Whether it does or not though it is a fact. It is the best thing we can do for ourselves. I am sure there are many people out there who are doing the right things and are still in pain. I wish I had an answer for that. I don't.

It doesn't change the reality, however, that if we take care of ourselves there is a significant chance that pain can be avoided, minimized, or at least delayed.

Yes we will still have temporary pain like I have just experienced, but we may avoid long term pain.

The only thing I have to caution (and I have to listen to myself here) is that exercise can indeed cause long term pain if you don't do it right. I am actually very careful and if I actually knew WHAT I did wrong yesterday I would do my best not to repeat it but unfortunately I don't remember hurting myself working out. It is the most logical place for it to occur but maybe it is just co-incidence. It doesn't really matter. The point is the same:

Exercise as safely as possible, eat well...and be healthy :-)

Alan