The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #422: Positive Visualization and Habits for Injury Rehabilitation

Use of mental visualization and small, daily habits to rehab a pulled hamstring in a little over a month.

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #422: Positive Visualization and Habits for Injury Rehabilitation

https://archive.org/download/podcast-422/Podcast%20422.mp3

This week’s episode took about 6 months to make and was totally unintentional!  I started recording it in March of 2023 (when it was snowing outside), and recorded the last part just recently, this past week (Sept 8, 2023). 

Long story short – I initially started recording it to try to document in real time an open gym session at my local gymnastic school.  I was a gymnast in high school and have kept doing some aspects of gymnastics since.  (If you’ve read The Thirteenth Hour, the parts about the training gym in the castle were taken directly from this part of my life).   So, in March of this year, after a number of years of asking, the local gymnastics program not far from where I live instituted an adult open gym (where people in the community can come and use the gymnastic equipment for a few hours).  This was huge!  It’s really unusual to find anything like this for adults, so the fact that there was now such a venue in my very own town got me really stoked.  Unfortunately, maybe a little too stoked since I pulled a hamstring about 20 minutes into the practice!  Major bummer!  

So I turned this episode into one on rehabilitation – it’s about what I did to work on that injury so that I could essentially get back to flipping in another month (the next open gym!).  I’d always heard that hamstring pulls would take several months to heal, so I had low expectations.  But, the night of the injury, I started icing the area, using compression wraps, and practicing a visualization technique that I had used and discussed before (in episode 96) from Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams. 

Twice a day, I would picture the muscles making up the hamstring group of my leg being massaged and lengthening, like a spring being stretched.  It didn’t take long, maybe a few minutes total per day, but it became a consistent part of my morning and nighttime routine.  I didn’t start stretching the leg in earnest until a few weeks after, though I tried to stay active (hiking, walking, eventually running after about a week, and martial arts movements) starting right after the injury.  It was hard to do certain things, especially kicking, but I started doing what I could right away.  I didn’t kick high, just low at first, then gradually progressing to waist level kicks and higher when there was no pain.  I also tried to do actual massage with a foam roller as well.  Essentially, I tried to do whatever I could to keep good blood flow going to the area.  By the time the second open gym rolled around (one month later), things were about 70-80% back to normal.  The second portion of the podcast, recorded in April, was done right after that second (successful) open gym.  I got a few things on camera:

Open gym session! Doing #gymnasticsover40 is an exercise in trying not to break stuff! Making a little progress on that #ironcross tho, which was harder in high school.

The last part, recorded 6 months after the initial injury, was done after another open gym (left the camera running for a few things below).  I was getting the family cold right then, but despite that, the consistency of the mental visualization described above with adding regular stretching to tight areas ahs really helped.  In some ways, I think the injury actually helped more than hurt me since without it, I probably would not have spent as much time trying to regain flexibility I’d lost (which probably contributed to me pulling the hamstring to begin with).  

Left the camera running during open gym! Caught some basica in video. #gymnastics #backflip #butterflykick #ironcross #ukemi #taihenjutsu

So, something to play around with should you run into similar issues!  Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

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Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

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Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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