The other day I received a newsletter/ email from Robin Sharma where he talked about his personal trainer getting him to perform more push ups than in his mind he felt capable of.
Since the beginning of February I have been attending exercise classes at my local gym – Body Attack Extreme and Boxercise.
I may have found an ‘ab’ finally and I echo what Robin says.
The encouragement of the class teacher Shaun and dare I say the desire not to lose face enable me to do more than I ever could when I ‘push myself’ in exercise.
It reinforced the idea in my mind that for patients with acute and chronic back pain, having a structured exercise programme is a MUST!
Many clinics provide treatment and at the end of treatment will instruct and usually detail a series of exercises for their patient to perform.
I have written about using exercise diaries to improve compliance, but really, most people will REALLY benefit from ideally some one to one training, but if not, and depending on the condition at least a one month plan which includes attendance at certain exercise groups.
For clinics which don’t already have them, I suggest you form a strategic alliance with a personal trainer to bolt on 3 or 4 training sessions to the end of the treatment programme to help patients post ‘treatment’.
Since compliance is such a problem and exercise is a crucial part of long term rehab, it seems crazy to me that more clinics don’t do this.
NOTE: Weight and obesity are all over the television and newspapers these days and magazines are full of diets. If we could sort our weight issues out by ourselves, there would be no pandemic.
How many joint pain conditions are not helped by the extra pounds being carried. The personal trainer will help get the ball rolling and hopefully get your patient on to a virtuous circle of progress.
Re Robin Sharma, he is new to me but so far I like what I am getting, get his free report at http://www.robinsharma.com/
Author: Stephen Small
www.SteadfastClinics.co.uk