So my cunning plan to improve my mobility and sleep through nightly yoga videos isn’t working for me. Having a good wind-down routine was helping my sleep as I had hoped. But while my frozen shoulder is gradually recovering, I still don’t have the shoulder mobility for a lot of yoga moves.
It’s easy to take movements for granted until you lose them. My right arm moves so easily above my head that I never thought about it. But the left is a different story – it’s come a long way from the weeks when I couldn’t even get it to 90 degrees but it’s still a long way off the normal range of movement.
I need to rebuild my arm strength and stretch the stiffened joint, but it’s much better to work these separately. Exerting strength requires the muscles to tense, which makes it harder to stretch, and trying to exert force at the edge of your range of motion risks injury. So it’s not a good idea for me to do moves like downward dog right now, as this requires me to support weight through my shoulder while it’s at the limit of its current range of motion.
I tried to keep going with my yoga videos for a week or so, making modifications as I was going along. But it was interrupting the flow and my shoulder was starting to send signals that I was doing too much.
So for now I’ve come up with a mini flexibility programme that I can do on my yoga mat, incorporating my shoulder physio exercises and a few yoga moves that either don’t use my shoulder or stretch it in a manageable way.
Hopefully this will help me get my shoulder back to the point where I can go back to my yoga videos, and in the meantime help me keep mobility and relaxation as part of my regular routine.
While working with clients as part of my personal training qualification, it’s been clear that one of the key ways a PT can add value is helping to tailor the exercise. Not just pulling an ideal exercise out of the box, but finding something that works for that unique body, using the equipment available. It surprised me just how many different variations I’d picked up through the training – and I know this repertoire will only increase as I build up more experience.
It can be frustrating when you can’t do your first plan, but being flexible can help you find the right way to achieve your goals. Where do you need to adjust, and what help might you need to get there?
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