How to Listen to your Body

I’m adding “listen to your body” to the list of marginally useful advice that gets doled out regularly, along with “don’t stress”, “think positively”, and so forth.  The problem with any advice that has been condensed down to five or fewer words is that it doesn't give any subtlety about what it actually means.

So let’s think about listening to our bodies.  I’m not sure about your body, but mine speaks a sort of foreign language that I’m not totally fluent in, and can sometimes be a bit reactionary and blow things out of proportion.  So even though I listen I don’t always get the message and that’s why my knee is in rehab now.

My advice is to not just listen to your body, but start a conversation with it.  Do some exercise, notice how you feel.  Intentionally do a little too much exercise, how does that feel?  Now do the same easy exercise routine 5 times and be a bit surprised that your body feels differently each time.

I highly recommend against intentionally injuring yourself, but sometimes the only way to know when you’re injuring yourself is to get an injury and remember what it felt like.  This is particularly true of overuse injuries, where it’s difficult to differentiate between your body saying “I’m tired” and “I’m hurt”.  Runners are used to interpreting pain as “I’m tired”, and 99% of the time we’re right.  The other 1% when we misread the message, then people look at us as if we are masochists and tell us to listen to our bodies.  Gee, thanks.

Try different exercises.  My current benchmark is the single leg press.  On my right leg I can put too much weight on the machine and my muscle simply isn't strong enough to lift it.  On my left leg, my knee starts to hurt before the muscle has reached its limit.  Ah-ha!  I've just found a way not only to expose my injury without making it worse, but I can also put a number of the state of my knee: how much weight I can lift without pain.  That number has been increasing, which is a good thing.

I can and have done short and slow runs recently without aggravating my knee.  However I now know not to push the pace because the knee will give out before the muscles complain.  When the limiting factor in the leg press is the muscle and not the knee , that’s when I’ll be ready for unrestricted running.

And this has truly been the benefit I've found in going through physical therapy.  It’s counseling for me and my body.  We’re getting back on speaking terms and fixing up our relationship.  I've learned how to politely ask how my knee is doing, and can get a useful response without it throwing a two week tantrum.