I believe everything happens for a reason. Even if it appears painful, there is something to be learned. It happened to me, dead on, full force blow to the ego. I am a huge believer in movement, mobility, and flexibility. I am writing this before I go out for a run to be followed by a bike ride before work. I will be lifting weights this evening after work. I am always trying to get better and faster while not getting injured. So when I volunteered to undergo a posture evaluation by a posture specialist, I was quite taken back to find out that I flunked most of the examination. Come on! It is that bad? Everything about how I stand, sit, move? I assessed the other people in the gym and surely I could out run, bike or swim most of them. How could it be that I was a structural disaster? After the first assessment, that lasted an hour and a half, with a lot of oh yeah and oh my by the trainer, I came home to think I was being lead astray. How could I be in such bad shape and why did I have to wait until another visit to hear the few things I needed to do to become perfect again. I love to learn and I am a fact checker. So out come the books that I possess on mobility and movement and training. When I went back to hear the diagnosis and to get corrective instruction I was taken aback. I was told I had a lot of tight areas and shown some release techniques. I am aware of being tight from training so that was all good. A positive was to get immediate relief of some tight areas that came from being active. All good. Athletes get tight muscles and I am an athlete so that is good.
Now the hard to swallow news. The photos. I have never preferred to be the subject of photos but happier to be the photographer. So this was an uncomfortable session in the first place. Me posing in my best posture while the trainer makes subtle comments about how much work will need to be done. Ok let’s see the results. Bam! Even I could tell how bad it was. How could I have been standing like that all of these years. Belly out, rounded shoulders pulled up to my ears leaning posteriorly. OUCH. This was a hard diagnosis to swallow. I will need to relearn a lot of things. I will need to add corrective routines to my already busy schedule to fix these problems. I will need to read more about my problems. Nothing appears to be good. I am tanking. Do I want to stay the course or improve my lot?
And then as I was wallowing in self doubt, it hit me. I do this every day to people that come in my office eating the Standard American Diet. All of the the things they ate that they thought was healthy were not. I informed them that what they are eating is leading to their lifestyle diseases and that everything will need to be altered in order to reverse these terrible ailments. I see the look of disbelief. The confusion and frustration. Why are they not jumping for joy that I have the cure? Why are they disappointed? Why not just drop everything and change?
I try to be supportive. We teach classes. I am available. But that is not really the problem is it. The problem is that we hear what we have been doing for a long time is what has caused disease or injury to ourselves. We hear that we are not experts in the simple things of life like feeding ourselves or standing correctly. We grade ourselves in the context of those around us. If someone is worse off then we slide up the scale. There is always someone worse. We all want an “A” in life skills. At least an “A” in standing up!!
So it is time for me to admit I have a lot of work to do on my posture and mobility. I need to learn much more and will rely on my trainer’s expertise to guide me. I will ask questions and challenger her but I will be doing my exercises daily to try and better myself the best that I can. Humble pie is not sweet but it will make your strong in the end.
I will also have more regard for those of you struggling to change. We are all in this together and the goal is to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be.
Thank you for reading.
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