How To Ease Health Upkeep Overwhelm– 3 steps to focus where it counts

Do you ever feel overwhelmed, or even confused, by all of the things you are told to do to keep your body healthy and moving well? 

Not only are we supposed to get 8 hours of sleep, drink tons of water, eat good, nutritious food, and exercise regularly, but the more you want to be active, and the higher the level of sport, the more you also have to maintain body mobility with rolling, stretching, strengthening, yoga, pilates, cross training, ball work, heat, ice, and more. Then, when something goes wrong or you get hurt, you’ve got to see massage therapists, PTs, chiros, MDs, DOs, or specialists. Maybe you even go down the Google or YouTube rabbit hole. 

There’s just so much.

And the problem I often see with all of this is that it leads to more physical tension in the body. The stress of trying to do it all leads to tension. The very tension that is leading to your problem (your back pain, your sciatica, your achilles pain, your knee pain, your neck and shoulder tension and limitation, etc). Then it perpetuates the cycle of tension, pain, and injury.

I totally get it. I was there, too. Back when I was a 2:50 marathoner, and a doctoral student at the same time, I was doing it all, or trying to. I was busy running around, squeezing in workouts, and rolling, mashing, icing, heating, stretching, strengthening, doing yoga, pilates, core, heavy weights, pool running, swimming, biking, cross training. You name it, I was doing it. I was hitting all of the many pieces. I was overwhelmed, but didn’t have the time or space to see the bigger picture.

Now, I wonder, was I actually getting the most out of my efforts?

Was I progressing with my energy focused in one intentional direction?

Or was I maintaining a bunch of different things, and dispersing my energy and focus?

I think the latter is true.

I wanted to be able to do it all, but I was misled, believing I had to keep adding in order to achieve my goals. I don’t believe that anymore. I’ve personally found that subtracting– in other words, focusing– has led me to the best results. In my body and otherwise. And as a PT, I find the same is true over and over again with the patients I work with. Whether they're healing a chronic pain or problem, or preventing them, I help them get results by helping them focus on the most important things.

The key is knowing where to focus, and focusing on the thing that changes all the other things. 

Simplicity creates clarity. And clarity leads to results.

One example of this was when I used to have iliotibial band (IT band) problems, a common runner issue. I would foam roll my IT bands, a painful and body distorting process. Foam rolling is very commonly prescribed for IT band problems.. Later, I learned that the problem wasn’t the IT band itself but coming from the internally rotated pelvis that put my IT band on more tension, which was occurring because of tight hip flexor muscles. Once I knew to focus on the center of the body and the nerves, muscles, and bones/joints there, I stopped foam rolling my IT bands and haven’t needed to in 10+ years. And I’ve helped lots of other people do the same.

So, here’s what to do in the grand sense of easing upkeep overwhelm:

Step 1. Know where you are in the Pyramid of Movement (see below).

Step 2. Focus on that phase (turn up the heat on this burner).

Step 3. Modify, maintain, temporarily stop, or pull back on all the others (back burner all the rest).

It’s true that there are a lot of things that can help our bodies. Aerobic exercise, in any form, is great for the cardiovascular system, as in the heart, as well as the brain, the lungs, and even stress… unless it’s hurting you. Then you need to pull back and focus on resolving what’s hurting first (and why!), then moving forward again.

Even though the body is a system of interconnected systems which all impact one another all the time, let’s look at movement and progression in a hierarchical way, so that we can relieve this tension and confusion and not perpetuate the problem with overwhelm. 

The Pyramid of Movement

The Pyramid of Movement is something I’ve adapted from physical therapist Gray Cook, and the running coaching framework from The Lydiard Foundation. These levels overlap, and the things we do at each, can overlap, but let’s take a closer look first.

1. General Overall Health. At the base, foundational level, we need basic health. This includes your vitals like blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), blood markers, whether you’re ill, wounded, injured, or have a disease. We need to be healthy first before we add more exercise and movement or we risk decreasing our health rather than improving it.
   

2. Systems Function. This is where I help most people. It includes the neurological, muscular, skeletal and other mechanical systems that we need to have healthy and connected in order to properly move and not be limited. Restrictions, imbalances, and dysfunctions here can greatly hinder or advance the motions and movements in the next steps up the pyramid.
   

3. Motor Control. This means how well you move with very simple tasks, or how well your brain is connecting to you body (we call it neuromuscular re-education). This includes activities like single leg stance (balancing on one leg, made harder by making it an unstable surface, throwing a ball at the same time, or closing your eyes), birddog (extending an arm or leg while on hands and knees with good core stability). It’s your ability to stabilize, to have good neuromuscular motion or control. It means your systems (from 2) can organize well to move. Sometimes this needs training even after we restore the function.
   

4. Fitness. This is where most people, practitioners, coaches, and trainers focus. And it’s important. But if we don’t have the lower levels operating well, we miss out on the full benefits here. This includes your cardio, your strength training, your flexibility or yoga. Your fitness development. Your habits of training, whether for improvement and performance in your sport, or for increasing your heart, bone, and joint health or weight loss or maintenance. Aerobic (ie. cardio), strength, and flexibility fitness is important for the health of your brain, bones, lungs, connective tissues, heart, and so much else. But if this repetitive movement is hurting you, it means it’s time to go focus lower on the pyramid at more foundational levels.
   

5. Skill. This final tip of the pyramid includes high level and multiplanar motions that are sport specific or more complex and demanding. Examples include kicking a soccer ball, shooting a basket, ski jumps, track workouts, box jumps, dynamic running in ultimate frisbee. Usually there’s a combination of abilities, requiring all of the systems below. 

So, yes, these overlap, and we often do a combination of things that include each or many of these levels. See how the foundational levels impact the upper ones, setting the foundation for more skilled, repetitive, or complex movement?

But, here’s where it helps with the overwhelm. Going back to the steps from above.

Step 1. Know where you are in the pyramid. 

When you truthfully assess where you are, or where you are mainly, you can focus on that area, and all of the actions to take there. If you have a chronic pain or problem that’s been sticking around, for example, it’s important to focus on the Function level so you can solve and move through that place. Rather than hiking more on that painful toe, you invest in the solution, and you grow and learn through solving it. Plus, your hiking will be more free and fun as a result. And you will have saved yourself so much time not being frustrated, confused, and overwhelmed by the injury itself. If you had an ankle sprain and now it’s healed, you might have to focus on motor control to restore the movement connectivity in the body, and to restore lost confidence in that body area. If you are in a phase where other areas are healthy, you’ve been able to progress fitness, the focusing on your complex skills is appropriate.

Step 2. Focus on that phase (turn up the heat on this burner)

Focus, focus, focus. Imagine if you focus for 1-2 months on solving that nagging back pain you’ve had for 2 years. You’d make leaps and strides. You’d go through a useful process. Imagine if you focused on your nutrition and sleep, how everything else would benefit as a result. It’s really hard to do this because our culture is full of distractions and noise pulling at you all the time. Focus, grow, be intentional. When in doubt, put your focus on the lower levels, and set the foundation there.

Step 3. Modify, maintain, temporarily stop, or pull back on all the others (back burner all the rest).

Resist the distractions. Put those other things on the back burner. If you’ve been running, take it easier, for fewer days, so you can actually heal that foot. If you’ve been strength training, but lack some mobility in your shoulder, focus on improving that mobility. Like I said, there’s some overlap with these. But particularly when they are in a time of injury, I see a lot of people struggle with wanting things to be faster and doing more exercise, sometimes prolonging their problem, and their overwhelm and frustration. By modify, I mean, if it hurts to hike, then go outside to be in nature, without all the effort, walk more easily, for the sake of being in nature. And do the actions or tasks in the Function phase to improve. Remember that putting your favorite activities on the back burner is temporary. Be patient. It’s simple and it’s also not easy. We all have a lot of mind-made conditioning and ideas about what we’re supposed to do and who we are, and what we need to keep up with. This clouds our path forward, making things less clear.

So, take a breath. Drop down from your mind into your heart. 

From here, move toward clarity, a less is more approach, and focusing on the right thing. Which means, the right thing, for you, at this time.

Let me know how it goes!

And please tell me, does this help? Do you have other thoughts, ideas, or questions?

Want more health and healing secrets sent straight to your inbox? Join my Heal. Listen. Learn Newsletter for 3 ideas from me, 2 quotes from thought leaders, and 1 question for you to ponder for the week.