I ironically write this today when only yesterday I did the total Dad-stereotype and fell asleep on the sofa, sitting up with my arms crossed and my head flopped over sideways like a tennis ball in a sock. I woke up this morning with a tight neck feeling as if someone had stabbed me with a chisel in one trap.

 

Do you know how long it took me to sort this uncomfortable pain? (Is there a comfortable pain?!)

 

15 minutes.

 

A few years ago, something like that would have crippled my neck for a week. I wouldn’t have been able to turn my head properly or do anything else other than moan about how sore it was. It might have taken a few physio appointments to make it feel better.

 

I was at the mercy of the perception that you can “sleep funny”, or that you can just be unlucky and turn a certain way and something plays up. My bad shoulder was in agony only because of the way I lay overnight, or if I didn’t have a pillow between my knees and lay on my side that would be the reason for my lower back pain the next day.

Here’s the scary, crazy thing! This belief is normal. 

 

There are varying degrees of it, but there are millions of us who believe that sleeping funny is what causes us to get a niggly injury or end up with muscle spasms for days on end. We often round it off with the good old phrase: “That’s just me”, with an eye roll and shrug as if to imply you’re still getting on with things like a trooper anyway… or maybe wanting to make the entire room miserable because you feel miserable (and it’s justified because having a sore neck or back makes you proper grumpy, it’s just not fun - how dare everyone else have perfectly moving parts!)

 

In this mindset, as soon as you see any advert with red circles around a skeleton of your sore bits, you will throw your money at it! Expensive pillows, mattresses, beds, chairs, braces, lumbar supports, you name it! Your eyes will light up because you can relate to the pains they’re talking about, and you’ll think that’s the thing you need to help you.

 

But, you need to remember this: being injured by sleep is NOT normal, or a part of ageing, and you’re not just unlucky!

 

There are basic things that you’re not doing when you’re awake which is the true cause of your pains. A funny sleeping position is merely the straw the broke the camels back. Fill in these gaps and you can sleep any way you like without fear!

 

It’s really not complicated… and you don’t need to buy fancy gimmick tools (except this Sleep Stick™ for $999.95, buy it off me today!!). Here’s the secret:

 

 

That’s it!

 

If you don’t move your joints how they can move then they become susceptible to feeling stiff or sore or weak, and THAT’S why the sleep gets you… or the turning too fast, or the picking up the embarrassingly light object. Those “moments” of being “unlucky” are actually long-term, compounded effects of a lack of good movements - and your body is telling you off.

 

You get a lot more warning signs than you realise until you start to listen to your body properly. Your body is always communicating with you and if you ignore it then it has every right to shout and try to protect you. All the while leading up to this telling off, you’ll get hints, signs and requests from your body to do something about an issue it’s got, indications that there’s stuff you need to do to help it out.

 

I’m not talking about repping out heavy weights or take on some intense 12 week training program that will make your “fat zones” cry to make yourself feel better. The stuff I’m talking about you’ll probably not even break a sweat doing, and you only really need to spend 5-10 minutes a day on it. It just needs to be COMPLETE. You don’t want to leave anything out. You want to check in on your neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, spine, hips, knees, ankles and toes. That way if something ever starts to feel the least bit funny, you’ll catch it before it even turns in to anything. 

 

It should be common sense, but it really isn’t!
 

If your joints don’t move well, you’ll be sore, if you make them move well, you won’t be sore. I’ve put some videos at the end of the blog to give you a nice idea of stuff you can do.

 
Even though the concept is simple, learning how to move well – and knowing what moving well even means – can be tough.

First step is to understand how you currently move:

 

Are you a confident mover?
If I asked you to do a cartwheel right now, would you give it a go, even if you’ve ever done one before?

 

Are you a standard mover?
You might say no to the cartwheel, but you can squat fairly easily, know you can stand on one leg, reach your arms overhead etc.?

 
Are you a timid mover?
Suggestions like cartwheel, squat, stand on one leg etc. make you nervous – or immediately make you think of reasons why you shouldn’t do them (“my back”, “my knees”)? If you’re a timid mover, you probably feel quite fragile and hold the belief that sleeping funny can hurt you.

 

You may be somewhere in between, but EVERYONE wants to become at least standard mover, you may need a good warm up before you try anything unusual, but bodyweight movements aren’t intimidating.

To get to this level, you don’t need to become a movement expert or even know the names of any muscles, but your neck, wrists, shoulders, hips and ankles can and should rotate, you should practice balancing until standing on one leg isn’t a challenge, and you want to be able to get up and down off the floor without it being a big deal. 

 

You’re never too broken or too old to start improving this stuff either! The Simplistic Mobility Method helps you test your baseline and improve on it until you’ve passed all the tests, and we have people that started in their sixties who feel better than they ever remember, and people who’ve had long term injuries which plagued them for years able to go back to the things they love after years of doing nothing. Your body can always adapt if you keep being consistent and feeding it with good movement daily.

 

If you look after yourself in this way during the day, your belief that you’re so weak that sleeping funny can hurt you or that you are incredibly fragile can go!

 

And only you can be the one to challenge that belief, no matter how hard it seems at the time. It could take you a few weeks of rotating your joints and challenging your balance to feel better, it could even take you a year, but the good habits that you build (even when struggling) will set your body up for feeling incredible in the future, and it is WORTH EVERY SECOND, trust me!

 

I want to leave you with two videos today to ponder!

 

Number 1: A follow along to introduce you to how easy movement can be.

If you’re completely new to this concept then you can try just sticking to this follow along every day for a month, you don’t need to overcomplicate it:

youtubeid=IRWr3c7F0yw

 

Number 2: A demonstration of what your joints are capable of.

Ankles, knees and wrists are delicate little creatures that you need to be careful with right?! Wrong. I built myself up to these “dangerous” positions working on my joints over time. These are all positions they’re capable of moving into, I just built a tolerance to bear load. This type of movement isn’t essential by any means, but use it as a reminder that you’re not fragile… and I’m not special (well, I am, but not in this sense) if you put in the same years of joint conditioning, you could get there too, if you really wanted.

 

youtubeid=uqDLIyKukOA

 

As always! I love ya,

Have an outstanding day!