The wrong way

Many guides on exercises or health simply tell you to “do X at least Y times a week”. They will show you how to do an exercise, or give you a number of minutes for taking walks, and think they’re done.

This can actually have very negative consequences. Yes, in general, exercise is better than no exercise. But like there is a “right way” to use your body, there is also a “wrong way”.

A personal example: posture

My chronic illness started with my back, which wasn’t straight. What did I do? I started exercising more. I did some things to specifically target my back, but mostly I just … cycled, played soccer, played table tennis, and other general activities.

The result was that I didn’t correct my back posture. I merely learned how to compensate for it, by strengthening all my other muscles. I made the problem worse. Because now my body was perfectly content with having terrible posture, because hey, we are fit and we can compensate!

To this day, I am discovering the negative consequences of this, and doing exercises to specifically undo this compensation.

Another personal example: too much weight

A few years later, people at my medical rehabilitation tell me to do pull-ups. (You know, bar high in the air, grab it with your hands, pull your body weight upwards.)

And they were right! The pull-up is incredibly hard. But once you can do it, your back muscles must be extremely strong.

But you guessed it: it was so hard, that I subconsciously compensated. When I filmed myself, after years of doing pull-ups, I noticed I

• Twisted and raised my right shoulder a lot
• Pulled much more with my left than my right
• At the bottom of the pull-up, I allowed myself to “hang” in my arms, which makes the exercise both easier and more dangerous.

Yes, my back was generally much stronger than before. But I also made the problem worse. Because one part of my body was much stronger than the other. And to compensate, my right shoulder started tightening and stiffening.

What do we learn from this?

Exercise is amazing, but only if you do it well. Because exercise is nothing more than training. Training muscle memory, trainnig default posture, training physical actions.

And as you can teach yourself the right thing, you can also teach yourself bad habits that takes years to unlearn.

This is how these problems usually manifest:

• Your posture is bad in general. This means you use the wrong muscles in any given exercise.
• You do exercises with too much weight. To be able to do them anyway, you compensate elsewhere. (Usually through posture.)
• You ask too much of yourself or exercise when you are already tired. As muscles fail, others will compensate. You become less coordinated, risking injuries.
• You repeat the exact same activity or exercises for the same body part. Instead, go for variety and target your whole body
• You only do exercise in short bursts, like two heavy fitness sessions a week, and are completely passive the rest of the time. Instead, stay somewhat active at all times.

As you see, compensation is the magic word here. When one muscle can’t do it, we have a lot of other muscles that can do it. The only problem? They do it worse and they aren’t meant for it.

These issues usually result in a muscle that is tight. It doesn’t allow much movement, it’s always stressed, it’s bunched up. Because when a muscle lacks the strength to do something, it will simply forbid you to do that thing.

I can give endless examples, both from my own life and from doctors to whom I spoke. But that would make this chapter far too long. So I’ll end with two last examples and hope you understand the gist of it. As you read this guide, as you exercise, prioritize exercising correctly over exercising a lot / heavily. I hope all these horror stories from my own life are enough to convince you.

Example: no balance

For years, I exercised in our own backyard. I’d run around with a football, for 30-60 minutes, until I was completely exhausted. This did many good things for me.

But I compensated. Because of my not-so-straight back, my balance was off. My right foot was considerably higher than my left.

The result? I “stood” on my left leg. I leaned left all the time. To still keep my balance, I tightened my right shoulder. I basically tucked in the right side of my body, so I wouldn’t fall over.

Terrible, of course. Once I realized, I had to

• Do exercises each day to untighten that shoulder
• Do difficult, painful exercises to strengten my core (abs and hips) so I would actually stand on both legs
• Fight against this habit every time I played a sport

Because this habit formed over years, it also took years to slowly dismantle it. Once you see it, it’s obvious and stupid. You notice your whole body is leaning one side, you notice your balance is terrible, you notice your right shoulder is always stressed out of its mind. But until then? You won’t notice just how wrong you are doing things.

Our body has wonderous ways of compensating. It will always do whatever is necessary to keep going and to stay inside its comfort zone as much as possible.

Example: push-ups

Many people think they can do push-ups. Many gym teachers, at high school, do nothing to correct that. (Unfortunately.)

We place our elbows wide, fall down, then get up.

I did this for a few years. And again, it was better than no exercise. But I ended up with ridiculously strong neck muscles, and not any muscle elsewhere.

The right way to do push-ups:

• Means placing your elbows at your side
• Leaning forwards
• Engaging your abs so that you are completely straight, from start to finish

This is much, much harder to do. It’s the only way to prevent compensation and to actually target the right muscles.