How to Deal With Anxiety About Being Unable to Exercise
By now, your regular exercise has become as second nature as breathing or wearing pants before leaving the house, but now something – a long family vacation or perhaps injury – has disrupted your daily routine. If you don’t exercise during the day, you are already nervous. Not working for a week or more? Oh no, panic!
Hey, everything will be fine. Really.
And it comes from someone who used to revolve their life around a gym and exercising regularly because she had a fully equipped gym at work that allowed her to work out five days a week, with no excuse. But this beautiful gym left when I decided to wander the world .
It was then that the anxiety about the loss of physical form increased greatly. It’s funny how fitness can be both a source of confidence and a performer at the same time. I equated the gym with progress, and in my head, the absence of a gym meant no progress; or worse, back . This thought scared me, especially when I imagined that all my hard work and successes were just melting away.
If you are dealing with an injury , you have a busy schedule that keeps you out of the gym, or you usually need some place where you cannot resume your normal training schedule, you are probably wondering if you really are lose all your progress?
You don’t get out of shape so easily
In short, the good news is that you don’t go back to the entry level as quickly as you think. More noticeable loss of strength may take two to four weeks of inactivity. If you’re a runner, your aerobic capacity can drop 20% after four weeks of inactivity.
There is definitely some truth to the saying “use it or lose it”. Your body is great at adapting to the stress of exercise (or lack thereof). This is partly why, as you get in shape, you need to constantly push yourself and challenge your body so that your fitness continues to improve (hence the terrible plateau).
The process of getting out of shape depends on how fit you were from the start, whether you are doing endurance or strength training, and how inactive or planning to be. I mean, are you doing the best you have, walking, doing yoga or cycling if possible? Or have you become a couch seating master?
You will feel much better mentally if you are as active as possible. This is your chance to focus on other areas of your physical health and maybe even try something new! Plus, let’s say you (hypothetically) lost all of your progress and later returned to training. It can be frustrating at first to find that you may not be able to do what you’re used to, but that’s okay – you’ll eventually bounce back and return to your normal fitness level much faster.
The “must” mentality makes you cheer up
If you have been suspended or are currently incapacitated due to injury, you may feel powerless in whatever you think you “should” do. Our very own Beth Skorecki, a staff writer for Science and Health, told me that when she tore the ACL, she thought she was going to go crazy and just hated what she couldn’t do anymore, saying:
I was in really good shape when I got injured and the injury didn’t seem so bad, so I really just wanted to get back to what I was doing. It was so unpleasant to be led astray.
Here Skwarecki feels that she “should” be able to quickly bounce back and get back to her normal routine, which made her uneasy. In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Dr. Michael Gervais , a sports psychologist and advisor to Olympic athletes, said that speaking of the mindset of a professional fighter: “We are captured by external [stimuli] that tell us how we should look, how we should think, how we should – and this “ought” in everything creates shame and insignificance. ” In fact, it is because of this swamp “should” and “should” you may find it harder to get rid of some weakness.
So don’t think about what you should be doing. Focus on what you can do , like Skvaretsky did:
I think that helped me find a [physical therapist] I trusted by focusing on what I could do and doing it as well as I could.
Gillian Mandich , a Western University graduate student in health and rehabilitation, also adds:
Although we cannot always control what happens to us, we can always control our reaction to what happens to us. Focus on other areas of your life that support your physical health. Prioritize nutrition, hydration, and sleep. It will help improve your overall health, improve your mood, and create the best healing environment.
Expand your understanding of “fitness”
When I couldn’t get to the gym regularly, I dealt with my initial fear of losing strength by doing the next best thing: bodyweight training. I was worried whether training with own weight sufficiently effective ( they can be and have been ). But the most valuable lesson I learned from this was that training isn’t just about how many miles you can run, how many pounds you can lift, or how many sets and reps you can do in an hour. …
Fitness can be anything, and as long as you commit to doing something within your current ability – whether it’s doing physical therapy, yoga, long walks on the beach, or doing bodyweight exercises, that’s enough. … This “good enough” mindset gives you the opportunity to give up this crazy idea of a “perfect” workout or fitness scenario that would otherwise lead you to completely abandon your fitness goals. Don’t have a gym? No problem , you can still exercise even if it doesn’t match your previous ideal definition of an ideal workout.
“Our brains and bodies love new things, so use this time away from the gym to try activities that will make you feel positive, energetic and confident,” Mandic said. Ever wanted to crochet? Do it! Maybe even hone your culinary skills. You never know what can relieve stress and frustration.
Find your tribe
When Skveretski had to endure a painfully long ACL recovery, she found solace in talking to other people who had suffered the same trauma. She said:
I asked their advice and they just told me what their problems were and what to expect. I have heard from so many cool people who have experienced this, and they told me how they did their exercises a million times a day right after the operation. It inspired me and I thought, “Okay, people have been through this before.”
Not sure where to find people who might have the same problem? You can start with Reddit , as you can find a thriving community for just about anything. You can also, for example, explore the Facebook groups at your local running clubs and ask, “Hi, you’re recovering from <specific injury>. Any advice on how to handle it? “You can even go to Instagram and search for hashtags related to your injury to find other victims.
Likewise, Mandic also recommends being the kind of person who helps someone else get through the same thing, saying that when you focus on helping others, it can help you feel good and possibly reduce your own worries.
If you are not injured, but just do not know what to do without the gym, I wrote a lot about how I deal with comfortable travel shoe with a suspension , a series of training sessions with its own weight and the ratio of the fact that nothing has changed. – your fitness or lack thereof is included. And the real conversation: actually, taking a break from time to time is good , so maybe it’s okay too.