What Happens When You Stop Exercising for 1 Month or 6 Months! Disk Bulge Injury Recovery

The problem with brown flakes is it always gets in my teeth really bad, so if it's in my teeth, I'm sorry. But, good morning. I thought I would just start this video here while I'm having my breakfast. And I thought in today's video we could kind of do a follow-me-along slash day in the life in terms of what I'm doing with my back injury at the moment because, as some of you may know, my back injury has flared up a little bit and this isn't going to be the main video on my back injury because I'm going to make a separate video talking about how it happened, the treatment processes and all that sort of stuff. But just to give you a very brief overview, I suffered a disc bulge in my L5S1 disc about two years ago and, to cut a very long story short, I couldn't walk for a few months. I was out of training for six to eight months. From a healthcare perspective, I was referred to a surgeon and he suggested that I have surgery and I took the decision to not have surgery just yet. And I have been working to basically get my body to a place where I can do anything that I like doing or be healthy, essentially. And I was doing really well. Everything was going fantastically. Recovery was great and I was pretty much able to do anything without any pain. I completely kind of forgotten that it even happened. And then recently, super randomly out of the blue, my back, like my lower back, started aching and I thought it was muscle pain because I got my to that. And it just progressively got worse over the space of a week to the point where I couldn't bend, I couldn't move. So I went back to see my osteo. And again, later on in the video, I will mention some of the treatments I've been having. But I went back to see him and he confirmed it was my disc. Essentially, it's my body grumbling at me to be careful. I do have a bit of a tendency to push my body quite hard. I'm obviously quite active. I do a lot of hiking, climbing, and I just do some silly stuff as well. Plus, I'm super, super clumsy. For example, I tripped up a curb yesterday and I also walked into a wall holding a box. I don't even know how I did it. I was walking with a box in my hand, really light box, and I got jammed onto a doorway that was on the wall and it jolted me backwards. So I do silly things like that. And it almost feels like two steps forward, one step back. So anyway, today, I'm just going to show you how I'm dealing with it, what I'm having to do, what I'm having to change, and also mention some of the mindset things that have come into having an injury, because that's what I often get questions about a lot, is how do you deal with injuries? How do you deal with not being able to train? And some of the downsides and negatives to do with that sort of stuff. So I'm going to discuss how I've been dealing with that and I think my best practices in that regard. And I also want to show you what happens when you go from training at a really high intensity and volume to doing the absolute minimum in terms of what happens to your body and what happens to your fitness and obviously what happens to your mind. So to give you a little bit of a brief overview of my day, I wake up at the moment, thanks to Hugo, around 5.30, he scratches at the door. And so I pretty much get up, I will read my book, but I have to read lying down because that's the most comfortable and sitting up is something that I need to avoid. And then around 6.30 or 7, I will get up and I will go for a walk. Now I've been very slowly increasing the distances of my walks. So I had to really tailor it back. And I think I mentioned this before, but I do quite a lot of steps. I live in a city, I pretty much walk everywhere if I can. So I do on average, around 20,000 steps a day. And I did try to maintain that initially when this injury started to flare up again. I think I'm a very stubborn person. And so I've been having to tail it back because my body was just not able to handle it. I was in a lot of pain about a kilometer into my walk and I had to keep stopping and having to rest and stretch my back out and all this sort of stuff. So I just had to really tail it back. And for a good couple of weeks, I had to basically do the bare minimum, which for me, I'm just, I'm always doing something I hate not doing something I'm always messing around, keeping myself busy tinkering, I'm not good at sitting still. So in a way, it's probably a good thing to challenge me to sit still a bit. So I've reduced my walks, but this morning I did about a 5k walk. So that felt really good. And I'm feeling a lot better than I was six or seven weeks ago. The next thing that I need to do, I've had my breakfast. This is not what I had for breakfast. This is just what the remnants of the brown flake box was. So I'm just finishing off because it would be rude not to, right? So I'm just having this and then I'm going to do my morning stretches. Now I do these stretches and these exercises about three or four times throughout the day. And they're really important to keep my body moving, but especially for the healing process of my disc. So I'm going to do those now and then have an appointment with my osteo. So I'll be heading into town to go and see him. I will be walking. So I'll get a little bit of an update from him to see how we're progressing. I've got a little bit of filming to do. Like I mentioned, I have a couple of calls with clients and at the moment, sitting down isn't comfortable with standing up for too long isn't comfortable, but standing is preferential. So I can move around a little bit. So I'll be at my standing desk for all my calls today. And then later on, I'm going to try and do a short workout. So I've been slowly incorporating workouts back in very, very slowly. I'm really mindful with what I'm doing. So I'm using a lot of resistance bands for assistance and I'm working on really low reps and good quality just to maintain my strength as best as possible. So we're going to do that. And then I think that's pretty much everything I've planned for today. So it's reasonably busy. I will show you what I can, but the main thing to do is let's do these recovery stretches. I literally have to do everything the non-lazy way, like putting my socks on. I have to make the effort to actually come down to where my feet are rather than just stand up and bend over. When I first did my injury, I couldn't even put my socks on. I couldn't even sit on a chair and lift my leg up or reach my foot. So small wins. Oh, and before well. All right. I think we're just going to roll with this lighting. It'll probably change quite a bit because it's pretty cloudy today, but it'll be okay. It'll be okay. So I wanted to chat to you guys about, I suppose, mindset around injuries and how you deal with it mentally. Because personally, from my experience, and I feel like from speaking to a lot of people, the pain and the injury itself, the physical aspect of it is doable. You can deal with that part of it, but the mental aspect is much harder to deal with than the physical. So one thing that often goes through people's minds when they are generally quite active, or maybe they're on a fitness or a health journey of some type, and then suddenly they're not able to do what they were previously doing. The immediate feeling is that they're going to lose everything that they've worked for. They're not going to be making any progress. In fact, they're going to actually regress. And for example, if they're looking at losing weight, then they're going to gain weight. That's usually what the mindset is. And I totally understand because I felt the same way and I still automatically want to feel that way. And I have to consciously work on reminding myself that that isn't always the case. Because even though I know how muscle memory works, and I know how training works, and I know how to try and look after my body best throughout an injury to keep my condition as optimal as possible, of course, my brain is going to play tricks on me. So I totally experience it too. I actually made an Instagram reel about this the other day. So I will put it up on the screen while I'm talking. Because essentially what I wanted to illustrate was that if you take three or four weeks of training, which is the space of time between these two videos, really very, very little is going to happen, not just physically in terms of what you can achieve your strength and your ability and your fitness, but also aesthetically what your body looks like is really not going to change that much. I think we often think that things are going to happen super, super quickly. And we're going to either gain weight, we're going to lose muscle, we're going to lose all our fitness, we're going to lose all our strength within the space of a week or two. But actually, sometimes a week or two off can be really, really beneficial. So sometimes you come back and feel stronger. And I know for example, with my handstands, if I have two, maybe three weeks or a month off, when I come back, my handstands feel solid. It's like my brain has had a chance to compute what's going on. And I feel like my perception, my coordination, my strength, everything is so much better than if I was to train it on a regular basis. So it can actually be a good thing to have a little bit of rest. But what if we extrapolate that out and say the injury period or the time off training is even longer. In my original injury, when I first did it, I was off training for a good six to eight months before I could do anything. And that was literally no training. Currently, I am still able to do some stuff, but back then I couldn't even walk for a good three months of that. And then when I could walk, it was very, very slow and short distances. And I was still in crippling pain. So I had a good six to eight months off training. And again, people would assume that I would lose all my strength. I would lose all my fitness and that I would probably have gained weight in that time. But actually it was very much the opposite in some regards. I lost weight and I lost quite a significant amount of weight. And I knew that was going to happen because I had a decent amount of muscle mass. And even though I was eating relatively the same, I lost weight during that process. I'll try and put two pictures up on the screen here so you can see it. And you can also kind of see that in the more recent reel that I put up. And again, I'll try and put two pictures up side by side, but I've actually lost weight in the last couple of weeks in terms of, I don't weigh myself, so I don't really know how much I weigh, but my clothes are baggier, everything feels completely different. And I knew that was going to happen as well because I'm not training as much. And before I was training regularly, pretty much every day, I was doing something. I was also doing quite heavy, lower body training as well. And I was constantly in muscle recovery. I was inflamed. I was holding onto water and I appeared to be a little bit bigger. Plus also I had a bit more muscle mass. And of course now it's been a good six to eight weeks. I'm going to start to see a loss of muscle and I definitely do feel softer, but I know that that will come back super, super quickly when I start training again. And there is actually a lot of silver linings and pros to focus on as well, which I'll come to in a second. So instead of actually gaining weight, even though I'm currently eating the same thing, I'm losing weight, which I think a lot of people would feel a bit surprised by. And then in terms of my strength and fitness, obviously at the moment, again, I'm able to do some training and I'm modifying all my exercise. I'll show you a little workout later, but essentially what I've done is I have completely dropped my reps right back and I have modified all the exercises so that I can work on the fundamentals, but also really focus on form and just maintaining that strength as well. In terms of cardiovascular fitness, that does diminish a lot quicker than muscle mass and strength. But again, these things come back relatively quickly when you start training again. So these aren't always necessarily bad things, maybe a little bit frustrating, but it's really not the end of the world. In my original injury, after about six to eight months of not training, not doing any exercise, I thought there is no way I'm going to be able to handstand, like absolutely no way. And of course, when I went back, I was wobbly. I was finding it difficult. I couldn't do a pull-up, but I was able to do a handstand and it was pretty shaky. Like I didn't hit it every single time, but it wasn't anywhere near what it would have been like when I was a beginner, nowhere near. And the same with pull-ups and push-ups and all that sort of stuff. My form was a bit off. My body was questioning what was going on, but it came back within about eight to 12 weeks, which is really, really quick in comparison to obviously what it was beforehand. And the silver lining was, is that I could really work on my form. I could address all the little form cues that I had maybe neglected over time and relish beginning to learn and exercise again, but finding the process a lot quicker and easier. So in terms of mentally struggling with the loss of gains or the loss of progress, that is what I always come back to. Obviously, I've kind of proven to myself that that's not the case and everything will be okay. And I think that goes a long way into helping to relieve that feeling. But honestly, it's never going to be as bad as you think. Muscle memory is really real. There are so many silver linings and pros that are going to help you when you do get back into training. And if it's just a week to four weeks, you are going to be absolutely fine. There is going to be so little change that you're not going to really notice it. And in fact, it may actually be a good thing. So I wanted to talk about what are the good things to do if you are injured, like what's really helped me to deal with an injury. And it is more so the mindset around an injury and what's helped to manage that. So the first one is have a treatment plan that you're proactively working on. So get the right advice. This was crucial for me. I initially didn't have a clue about my injury. I didn't really understand what had happened. No one explained it to me. And I actually thought it was something else at the very, very, very beginning, so probably didn't deal with it perfectly well. And so I went through a phase of not really doing anything about it, but just being told by the doctors and by the physios of the NHS just to wait and rest and see how it goes. Eventually, I started seeing an osteo who I still see now. And I think that was really the changing point for me. He not only gave me exercises and gave me rehabilitation stuff to do, but he also explained to me exactly what had happened and what I should and shouldn't do and why I should and shouldn't do those things. So I actually had an understanding, like a visual understanding of what was going on in my body. So if I was to bend forward, why is that not a good thing? And when I bend back, why is that potentially a good thing? Or why sitting for too long isn't a good thing? So I really understood what was going on. And obviously, alongside that, he gave me specific exercises so that we could see improvement week on week. And just being proactive in recovery and knowing that I am making changes that are going to be benefiting me, even if it is excruciatingly slow, which it was back then, it just makes you feel like you have a little bit of control. And I think that's the thing with injuries. You kind of feel like you've lost control and that you don't really have any say in the matter. But if you can take it into your own hands in some regard and say, right, I am doing the right things, I know I am, and I'm just going to make a slow and steady approach to it, then it just makes you feel mentally like you're achieving something and you have a little bit of control. So that's my first thing. Try to seek out good advice and be proactive with your recovery. If you're struggling mentally with your injury, try not to be passive with it, but take some of that control back. Secondly, and I've already mentioned this one briefly, and that is look for the silver lining. And I've said this with my autoimmune disease as well. Even though it can be really, really rubbish, like, I mean, I'm just using a nice word that it can be horrendous to deal with an injury and you just feel like your motivation, your determination, everything is just completely through the floor. There is always a silver lining in these things. And for me, the two that I really come back to are firstly, never not appreciating what my body is able to do. Initially, when I got my injury, I couldn't put my socks on, I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't pick something off the floor, I couldn't take the trash can out, I couldn't even sit down on the toilet comfortably. I was in agony doing that. And I don't think I will ever not appreciate the ability to do those very, very simple tasks, let alone the things that I love doing, like hiking and rock climbing and doing my calisthenics, just going for my morning walks. I just never, ever take that for granted anymore. And sometimes when I'm in the gym, and I'm doing an exercise that I hate, like hollow body holds, I just say to myself, Lucy, just be grateful that you can actually do this right now, because there was a time where you couldn't and you would have wanted nothing more than to have been in this position right now. So that's one thing. It's just it gives you this huge appreciation for what your body can do. I also think it always gives you empathy for other people who maybe have chronic illnesses, or they are in chronic pain, or maybe they've experienced a similar injury, even the mindset aspect of it, and they might be struggling with an aspect of not being able to train or do something, commit to something fully. It just gives you empathy for other people. And I think that is really, really, really important. And then the last one I always think of is, again, I've mentioned it, but being a beginner again, you get to go back to the beginning and speed up the process. But along the way, you can use all the knowledge that you had in the past to nail down on the things that maybe you neglected a little bit, work on some things from a new perspective, and really just challenge yourself all over again. And that can be really nice. It's like a bit of a reset. And it's a really nice feeling when you try to put a bit of a positive spin on it. So those are the sort of things that I like to focus on in terms of silver linings. Now, this next one is probably easier said than done, but try to focus on what you can do rather than dwelling on what you can't. It can be super, super tempting to sit there and say, I can't go for a run, or I can't do pushups, or I can't do whatever it might be that you want to do. Of course, you're going to focus on these things that you're not able to do because you probably really miss them, or you are making progress with them. But there's always something that you can do. There's just something, even if it's not exercise related, or it's to do with your health, there is always something that you can do, even if it's got nothing to do with exercise. You could take up a new hobby, you could prioritise spending time with your friends and family, maybe you haven't been able to do that as much. You can prioritise work. I've found that I have been super productive while I've been injured. The only thing that holds me back is that if I'm in pain, it's uncomfortable to sit and it's uncomfortable to stand. So I find it hard to find a comfortable working position. But other than that, I've had so much more time on my hands, and I've had so many ideas. And it's a bit of a weird one, because sometimes I don't feel motivated, because obviously I want to be exercising, I want to be doing these things that I'm talking about, and I love so much, and I'm really passionate about. But I also love being able to see other people achieve those things as well. So I try to tap into that, and really use that to motivate me. Because this is the important thing that we need to remember, and that is this will pass. It may feel really big right now, and it may feel like the end is just not in sight, but you will eventually get better. And I know it's really easy to sit here and say that I've sat there many times, especially during my initial injury, and I thought there is absolutely no way that I can heal from this. My body is in excruciating pain 24-7. I can't even go to the toilet. This is going to end my career. I'm never going to be able to do calisthenics again. I'm never going to be able to do anything that I love. But it did get better, and I got to a point where I didn't even remember it happening. I remember sitting, talking to Liam, my osteo, and I said to him when I first started seeing him, I just feel like this is never going to get better. And he said, I promise you, it will get better. He said, one day you will bend and pick something up, and you'll stand up, and you'll realize that you didn't actually have any pain. He said, that will happen. And I was like, there's no way. I can't imagine that ever happening. And it did. And those days where I didn't think about it became more and more frequent. And then it started becoming a week that I wasn't feeling it. And it just started to improve. And I suppose that proved to me that it does get better. It will get better. It will pass. It may never get back to perfect. And I heard this on a podcast the other day from Bear Grylls to Stephen Bartlett. I don't want to get to the end of my life in a pristine and preserved body. I want to come skidding in sideways going, well, that was a hell of a ride. That was fun. So, you know, you might have little niggles. Yes, there might be things that you need to modify throughout your life, whatever it might be. Or you might make a full recovery. This might just be a really temporary thing. Maybe you've just got like a really bad flu or something like that. But it will always get better in some regard. And we always get better at dealing with these things as well. So there's always that to hold on to. And I think that's really important to try and remember, especially when you're in the dark part of it. And the thing is, like I mentioned, when you do get to that point, it will be all the sweeter when you realize how incredible your body is, that you can go through that and it can heal. And how lucky you are to have the ability to go and do the things that you love or simply be able to put your socks on or take the trash out without having to be in pain or struggle. Even though it really, really sucks. It truly, truly does. There are so many positives that can be had from it. And I've said this to Josh last year when he was ill, you know, he had really big surgery and he couldn't do the sport that he loves. He couldn't go to the gym, which he loves. He was basically bedbound for a while while he was healing. And it took him a really, really long time, plus all the time that he spent being really, really ill as well. And he went through exactly the same thing. It was almost identical to how I felt mindset wise. And he's now back at the gym. He's now back playing rugby. And him being able to do those things, he will appreciate so much more now than he did before, because it was almost like it had been taken away from him. And it just gives you that new appreciation for how amazing it is to be able to do those things. So yes, it will be sweeter. So anyway, that's pretty much how I deal with the mindset aspect of it. I'm making it sound like it's all rosy. It's not. There's days where I sit crying about it, but we have to take the good with the bad. And there is always going to be a good day and a bad day. So you focus on the positives when you can. And sometimes you can allow yourself to have a down day, but know that it will get better and everything will be okay. I really don't think anything is really as bad as we think it's going to be. But anyway, moving on from mindset, I'm going to make myself some dinner soon. And that brings me on to kind of my last point of the video, which is about maintaining nutrition, I suppose, and maintaining what you can. So I am going to go and train and do a quick workout session. Again, like I said, I've just dropped my reps. I'm still focusing on trying to do what I can to the best ability I can. But really, really focusing on form and just maintenance. I'm not pushing my body. I'm just trying to keep it where it is as best I can. So I'm going to go and do that. And then I'm going to have some dinner. Now in terms of nutrition, I haven't changed anything. The only thing, and I've already been doing this anyway, if you've been seeing my videos, is that I try to prioritize protein. And that way, because I've been injured for, it's coming on to like seven or eight weeks now, my muscle will start to decline if I'm not doing as much as I was before. So if I make sure I get enough protein in, then I am giving my body the best chance to maintain that muscle as much as possible. So that's my goal. It's just to eat what I normally eat, which is fairly balanced anyway, and just make sure that I'm prioritizing and getting that protein in as much as possible, staying hydrated and getting enough food. Because obviously it can be tempting if you just have to stop training completely, totally pull back on how much nutrition you're having. But it's not necessarily a good thing. We want to maintain here. I don't want to be in a deficit in any way. So I want to make sure that I maintain what I'm eating, keep that protein coming in, and just keep my body as strong as possible. Because to recover, your body needs some nutrients, your body needs a bit of energy. So we need to make sure that we are giving it what it needs. Plenty of rest, plenty of water, and plenty of energy. So that is the plan for the rest of the day. I'm going to go do my workout with my resistance bands, my best friends. And then I'm going to have some dinner. I don't know what I'm going to have yet. It will probably be chicken with vegetables, because I'm addicted to it really badly. And then I'm going to do one more round of stretches, because I do that quite regularly. And it will be bedtime. So that is basically my daily routine at the moment. I might do a little bit of work later, but I will do it at my stand up desk. So yeah, I think I should get myself changed and get myself to the gym. And I'm going to the gym at the moment, even though I'm doing about half of it at home, because I can't be bothered to go to the gym, and half of it at the gym, because I miss seeing other human beings. So I'm going to go to the gym tonight, get myself out the house, stretch my legs a little bit. So yes, let's get it done. You're literally hiding behind my plant here. I'm thinking I should just wear this top, just go baggy t-shirt style. But it is also quite hot.