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The past year has been a blast! It’s a great feeling, closing out my first full year at Royal City Physio. Karen Nichol has built an extraordinary clinic that promotes excellence and makes everyone feel like family. The additions of Pat Trulove-Downey and Emily Mackinnon to the front desk team are no exception. Thank you to the whole Royal City Physio team – Karen, Jayme, Riley, Brendan, Adele, Lauren, Myah, Katie, Pat and Emily – for making my first year fun and successful.
Last year I had a goal of running 365 days in a row. It ended on day 254 with a training error of too much mileage too quickly, as I pushed to build to a 30 km distance for a race in Ontario. I completed the 30 km distance as a training run, and unfortunately injured what I thought was my Achilles, but thankfully turned out to be the surrounding soft tissue. After 12-14 weeks without running, I’m once again building up my distance, but this time without running daily.
During my time off, I bought a road bicycle and have been cycling to and from the clinic on dry days and the occasional wet one. Cycling has been a great way to maintain my fitness before returning to running. The New Year may bring swimming into my exercise repertoire and with that, triathlons!
My experience on the bike has further reinforced that I feel my best after I have exercised and that it’s important to build exercise into daily routines. To that end, I have a New Year’s challenge for all of you who read this blog: Choose one activity that you can do for 5 to 10 minutes (or more) each day to improve your health and create a habit of it by doing it every day.
Example activities:
Take the stairs at home or at work instead of the elevator – if your unit is up too many flights of stairs, get off the elevator 2-3 floors below and work towards taking the stairs the whole way.
Walk to and from the grocery store instead of driving.
Sit quietly and reflect for 5-10 minutes each evening before bed.
After you wake up in the morning, limber up by doing 10 squats, 10 jumping jacks and 10 calf raises.
Stand and do a lap around the office each hour.
Go for a walk with a colleague during lunch instead of sitting to eat.
Choose a daily activity and modify it to turn it into a small or large exercise to improve your health.
I look forward to seeing all of you in the New Year and hearing about the activities you modified or added to your day that get your heart rate up and blood pumping!
Stephen Baker graduated from Western University with a Masters of Physical Therapy. He has a passion for helping those with neck, hand or knee injuries return to their daily adventures. Book with Stephen today.