文字起こし 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.998
Can movement practice help you fall better as you age? What an odd question. And yet, I think last week I proved the answer was yes.
00:00:09.998 --> 00:00:18.074
Don't worry, I'm okay. I'll fill you in on all the details and why this is actually positive in 1 minute.
00:00:18.074 --> 00:00:29.226
Hi, I'm Steph, creator of My Body Can, a project where I am documenting my movement journey in midlife, trying to get comfortable with what I can actually do.
00:00:29.226 --> 00:00:38.071
With my body and letting those expectations from the previous decades of my life melt away and just enjoy what I can do.
00:00:38.071 --> 00:00:42.686
So I had a tumble last week. There's nothing major that happened.
00:00:42.686 --> 00:00:52.684
I literally was crossing a very tiny street in a tiny suburban place that we're staying until we move into Bilbao next month, and I fell.
00:00:52.684 --> 00:00:59.606
I felt something that my foot caught on, and I went forward straight. Oh no. Forward and down.
00:00:59.606 --> 00:01:13.450
Now, I had a pretty traumatic fall about 6 years ago in November 2019, and it— I think that's the reason why I then had about a year and a half of on and off vertigo.
00:01:13.450 --> 00:01:21.141
Was it that, or was it perimenopause? We'll never know. It could have been a combination. It was pretty nasty.
00:01:21.141 --> 00:01:22.295
Vertigo's Really? Yeah.
00:01:22.295 --> 00:01:36.523
So the fact that I fell last week and I'm talking about it already, that's different because it's, it's taken me a long time to be able to talk about that experience because of the traumatic aftermath.
00:01:36.523 --> 00:01:44.215
But this fall last week was nothing. I mean, okay, my knee hurt, but It wasn't painful of a fall.
00:01:44.215 --> 00:01:54.982
Um, it's a very different experience. I'm most surprised by my emotional and nervous system reaction to the fall, because of the things it could have brought up.
00:01:54.982 --> 00:02:04.980
So let me explain exactly what happened. I was crossing the street, and I fell. I fell literally forward, almost like a ruler just fell over.
00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:15.363
And about a few seconds after, uh, after I— it started, I saw— I mean, I kind of watched myself fall to literally my hands and knees.
00:02:15.363 --> 00:02:24.977
My head didn't touch the ground, thank goodness, like it did the first fall from years ago. And now I've had weak wrists for years.
00:02:24.977 --> 00:02:32.284
Well, no, I've, I've had weak wrists for years and years and years, ever since I was at university.
00:02:32.284 --> 00:02:44.590
I did something when I was riding my bike up hills a regular basis, and it just messed up my wrists, and I've never been able to get them back to normal.
00:02:44.590 --> 00:02:49.204
I don't even know what normal would feel like for my wrists.
00:02:49.204 --> 00:02:58.049
So the fact that I fell on my wrists and they protected me from going further and hitting my head blows my mind.
00:02:58.049 --> 00:03:01.126
It is absolutely wild to me. That's amazing.
00:03:01.126 --> 00:03:11.893
It makes me think that the wrist exercises and things I've been putting off until my wrists were stronger, I might be able to incorporate them in soon.
00:03:11.893 --> 00:03:19.584
So I fell on my wrists and knees, and I didn't hit my head at all. Didn't. I just didn't.
00:03:19.584 --> 00:03:28.044
There was no one there. There were cars coming, but they were really far away, and it's a very tiny, slow street.
00:03:28.044 --> 00:03:35.351
And so nothing happened. Nobody hit me. I didn't fall in front of anything. There weren't even any bicycles.
00:03:35.351 --> 00:03:38.043
It was very anticlimactic in that regard.
00:03:38.043 --> 00:03:49.195
The biggest result of it was physically, honestly, is that my left knee got scuffed and I've had to bandage it up daily because it is an open wound.
00:03:49.195 --> 00:03:58.040
And I have to put my feet up at work just to make sure that it doesn't, um, get worse while it's healing.
00:03:58.040 --> 00:04:08.807
Um, and it's a very sexy shade of yellow, if that's a thing. But I must have slid a little because it wasn't just that my knee hit.
00:04:08.807 --> 00:04:14.191
It looks like my knee might have dragged a bit when I fell down.
00:04:14.191 --> 00:04:28.420
Because it happened so fast, I don't even remember much other than the thing that I tripped on and then being near the ground but not hitting it with my head, which I was very happy about.
00:04:28.420 --> 00:04:45.725
Um, my phone fell out of my bag, interestingly, and then picking it up and limping over to the bench that was nearby so I could just kind of assess what happened, because I knew that I was going to have like a delayed reaction.
00:04:45.725 --> 00:04:55.723
Falls set me off because of the big fall from a few years ago. Um, I thought I'd be in fight-or-flight mode for a long time.
00:04:55.723 --> 00:04:59.569
But, like, after I calmed down, something would come back.
00:04:59.569 --> 00:05:07.644
Panic attacks would come back, or something would happen, because that's what's happened since the big fall a few years ago.
00:05:07.644 --> 00:05:22.257
So I was giving myself a little bit of time for my adrenaline to go down and to get over the embarrassment, and there was a man in a car who was far away but apparently saw it.
00:05:22.257 --> 00:05:29.949
And so when he got to me, he stopped, got out of his car to make sure I was okay.
00:05:29.949 --> 00:05:36.871
Oh my gosh. It was really, really sweet. When I fell in November of 2019, I fell sideways.
00:05:36.871 --> 00:05:39.178
It was a very different experience.
00:05:39.178 --> 00:05:54.560
There was a rickety stair as I was going from— it was in a restaurant— and as I was leaving my seat and going towards the exit, there was a rickety stair and I fell sideways completely off the stairs.
00:05:54.560 --> 00:06:01.482
It wasn't that high,
Load full transcript
but I fell onto Ate one of those giant potter plants, like giant, giant.
00:06:01.482 --> 00:06:06.866
Like the diameter was probably two feet, and it was very thick and hard.
00:06:06.866 --> 00:06:13.788
When I went to the doctor, she literally and I showed her a picture of the plant pot.
00:06:13.788 --> 00:06:21.094
She literally gasped and looked at my head like, "How are you okay?" Oh. Yeah, so that was something.
00:06:21.094 --> 00:06:32.246
But I honestly don't even remember most of what happened last week. Just tripping and being on the ground, but not my head, which I was really happy about.
00:06:32.246 --> 00:06:41.860
It took me a few hours to get past the embarrassment. I did replay it over and over in my head, I'm not gonna lie.
00:06:41.860 --> 00:06:47.629
Why do I keep tripping? I mean, it was once in 2019, once, once then.
00:06:47.629 --> 00:06:55.320
So I mean, that's not— once every 6 years, if that were to repeat, that's not a lot of tripping.
00:06:55.320 --> 00:07:04.165
And then I remember that the last fall was that long ago, 2019. That's not someone who falls a lot, that's just life.
00:07:04.165 --> 00:07:14.932
And if I actually sat down, if I actually sat down and listed all the times in my life I had fallen down, it's really not that many.
00:07:14.932 --> 00:07:25.700
I'm just really embarrassed when I fall. I don't know where that comes from. Ah, so I was just really embarrassed because it was such a non-fall fall.
00:07:25.700 --> 00:07:29.161
There wasn't anything that jutted in front of me.
00:07:29.161 --> 00:07:37.621
I've gotten hit by motorbikes before and not fallen down, so I'm like, hey, how did I fall with almost no catalyst?
00:07:37.621 --> 00:07:47.235
Like, what happened? Something snagged my foot and I fell down, but when I went back— and yes, I went back— I couldn't find anything.
00:07:47.235 --> 00:07:57.618
But I've literally gotten hit by more moving things before and not fallen down, and yet I fell down with this tiny thing I couldn't even find.
00:07:57.618 --> 00:08:04.924
So all of this did kind of go around my head a little bit, especially the first few hours.
00:08:04.924 --> 00:08:15.692
It took me a while to get past it, but the biggest takeaway that I had after this time was this: I fell on my hands and knees.
00:08:15.692 --> 00:08:22.614
My hands and knees are part of my body that I don't feel are particularly strong right now.
00:08:22.614 --> 00:08:33.381
My wrists have been weak for years. My knees are the first things that cause me to have problems when I do a new exercise the wrong way.
00:08:33.381 --> 00:08:42.611
That's probably normal for my age, although I really don't— I don't really desire to be normal if it's painful, but— or weak, right?
00:08:42.611 --> 00:08:51.071
Strength is definitely one of my goals for this year. Physical strength, emotional strength, financial strength, and so on and so forth.
00:08:51.071 --> 00:09:01.839
But that's a whole other issue. Let
me know if you're curious about my new vision board. I'm happy to talk about that in relation to movement goals.
00:09:01.839 --> 00:09:05.684
Feel free to leave a comment anywhere that you can.
00:09:05.684 --> 00:09:18.374
Compared to the previous big fall— compared to the big fall— I have to do a comparison because I don't know how else to process all of this, to be honest with you.
00:09:18.374 --> 00:09:22.605
Compared to the la— that fall. This was a quick reaction.
00:09:22.605 --> 00:09:45.293
My balance exercises didn't stop me from falling, but man, oh man, my form must have been pretty good because my wrists are fine, and my shoulders from the kind of jolt when I hit the ground were only sore maybe a day or two, and I didn't actually do my arm workouts that day or the day before.
00:09:45.293 --> 00:09:52.215
I might have given myself a day off, and then I went lighter bands the leg week afterwards.
00:09:52.215 --> 00:09:59.137
And then for the first workout after that, about 3 days, I went back to the medium band.
00:09:59.137 --> 00:10:06.828
And exercising this soon after an quote-unquote accident— I don't need the quote-unquote, it was an accident. I did fall.
00:10:06.828 --> 00:10:17.211
There was impact. So exercising that quick afterwards is not something I would normally do. I would normally wait and continue to get weaker and less flexible.
00:10:17.211 --> 00:10:25.672
And then kind of have to start over. But I didn't go down to my full squats, but I've been doing squats.
00:10:25.672 --> 00:10:31.440
So I'm keeping up to some degree until my knee heals. My sexy yellow knee.
00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:39.516
So my takeaway, my big takeaway after the fall— this one, not the one years ago— is I feel more efficient.
00:10:39.516 --> 00:10:42.977
Is that the phrase I want to use? Efficient.
00:10:42.977 --> 00:10:51.821
I'm not even sure how to talk about this because I'm not— I don't know how to talk about this, but I'll try.
00:10:51.821 --> 00:11:12.972
So I felt— I fell more efficiently in a way that did minimal damage to my body, and I was able to, instead of rest until all the bruises healed, I was able to listen to my body and continue to do movements that helped me recover well and slowly regain my natural movement back.
00:11:12.972 --> 00:11:30.277
Like, after all of the band workouts and all of the arm workouts, dumbbell workouts, and I— that I'm doing, and doing— I'm doing fascia exercises to continue to stretch things, to stretch the fascia out and make sure that things don't get stuck anymore.
00:11:30.277 --> 00:11:39.891
Because I think a lot of my injuries in the past have been because I moved in a way that moved things that were stuck.
00:11:39.891 --> 00:11:42.583
In my body. I honestly think that.
00:11:42.583 --> 00:11:52.197
And by having my fascia be loosey-goosey like it's supposed to be, I think that makes it easier to fall, or less dangerous to fall.
00:11:52.197 --> 00:11:58.349
I don't know. I don't know
if it was muscle-eye-hand coordination or the fascia being loosey-goosey.
00:11:58.349 --> 00:12:08.348
What I know is the combination of things, even though I don't feel like I'm making as much progress as I would like to, Something worked.
00:12:08.348 --> 00:12:19.885
Something was different. That feels like a win. I mean, the first time I did the fascia exercise, I didn't do the 10 minutes, I did 8, and it hurt.
00:12:19.885 --> 00:12:32.575
So I waited for it to not hurt, and I did 8, and I did 8, and I did 8, and I did 5 some days, and eventually I worked up to 10.
00:12:32.575 --> 00:12:38.728
But then 2 times after that, I did the regular 10 minutes. So I felt better.
00:12:38.728 --> 00:12:47.188
I guess you could say I felt better, and I didn't wait as long to keep doing movements, movement exercises, strength exercises.
00:12:47.188 --> 00:12:57.956
I didn't wait as long. Those— that's a huge win. These are all huge wins. I don't want to be super positive about falling because it wasn't fun.
00:12:57.956 --> 00:13:04.878
There was recovery. I had ice on my leg for days, and walking was awkward, and so on.
00:13:04.878 --> 00:13:14.107
But there's something in the failure or falling that made me realize that I've gotten better, that my body has gotten better with mishaps.
00:13:14.107 --> 00:13:24.490
I'm wrapping up the antibiotics and other medications, trying to get rid of the bronchial infection. So this was another thing happening on top of another thing.
00:13:24.490 --> 00:13:28.720
So I felt a little overwhelmed. I can't lie about that.
00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:41.410
But if I really do the umbrella thing and look at it from a bigger picture perspective, this fall actually reinstated— this fall actually makes me realize that what I'm doing is working.
00:13:41.410 --> 00:13:49.871
The exercises I'm doing, the pace, the rate, the amount, the intensity, the joy that I like, that I get from it.
00:13:49.871 --> 00:13:59.484
It's all working. I'm just a little bored, but that's okay. It feels good and it's working. Do I have to like what I'm doing?
00:13:59.484 --> 00:14:07.560
Do I have to be stimulated all the time? Do I have to feel like I'm going to be swell afterwards?
00:14:07.560 --> 00:14:10.637
No, absolutely not. So I didn't just rest.
00:14:10.637 --> 00:14:23.327
I actually kept going, and that could be a first for me because I used to rest every time something bad happened to my body, to the point of probably damaging it more.
00:14:23.327 --> 00:14:33.710
I could have stopped and waited for everything to be perfect, but in my mid-50s, that would take forever, and I would get worse, so I didn't.
00:14:33.710 --> 00:14:40.632
I pushed a tiny bit and I listened to my body, and I'm really glad that I did.
00:14:40.632 --> 00:14:50.630
So can you— can the right movement exercise help you fall better in midlife? I don't know. This N of 1, I want to say yes.
00:14:50.630 --> 00:14:59.860
So my body can, and your body can protect us from ourselves and from random things on the sidewalk that might Make us fall.
00:14:59.860 --> 00:15:01.782
And from things in life.
00:15:01.782 --> 00:15:16.011
Not exactly something I had put on my last year's vision board or even remotely thought about when I'm looking at different exercise equipment and videos to try out and different exercises I want to experiment with.
00:15:16.011 --> 00:15:26.009
Never, never in a million years did I think this was something I needed to think about or that would be something I needed to Do.
00:15:26.009 --> 00:15:32.931
But I'm really grateful that all, all of this movement journey in my midlife. But here we are.
00:15:32.931 --> 00:15:41.007
And so I'm going to rack this up as a win, as a double win, triple one once my knee heals.
00:15:41.007 --> 00:15:51.390
I feel better and I got back sooner. So those are wins. Those are wins. Feel free to share your experiences with any and all of this.
00:15:51.390 --> 00:16:00.619
I'd love to hear if you dealt better with injury or physical things that you weren't expecting to happen once you started moving more.
00:16:00.619 --> 00:16:02.927
I would love to hear it.
00:16:02.927 --> 00:16:12.925
I appreciate you listening to this, and yeah, I look forward to hearing your experiences with falling, dealing with injuries, and the mindset of it all.
00:16:12.925 --> 00:16:24.077
And all that good stuff. All right, remember, your body can and my body can do a lot more and protect us from a lot more than we realize.
00:16:24.077 --> 00:16:26.000
See you next time. Bye.