Ruff Around The Edges
Ruff Around The Edges
Mindset Episode 023 | When you can't find the muscle you're supposed to train
When you have to train something you don't know how to identify, where do you start?
Can you even start?
I share the experiences a friend of mine and myself have had doing physical therapy, the lessons I learned from it and how they apply to life with our dogs.
How do you find which dials to tweak?
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Kajsa: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mindset Podcast for guardians of dogs who are just a little rough around the edges. I'm your host, Kajsa van Overbeek, a life coach dedicated to making life with your challenging dog feel less challenging, both by sharing stories of other people's similar experiences and by showing you how you can harness the power of your brain to make it work for you instead of against you.
Welcome to another quick mindset episode of Rough Around the Edges. And this episode was inspired by a couple of talks that I've been having with a friend of mine about Let's just call it our decaying or deteriorating bodies, [00:01:00] because we both love to do sports or in my case, I love to do the one big sport, swimming, and she, my friend, is a triathlete, so she does a whole lot more than that.
But one of the things that, you know, most people who do sports a little bit more intensively have in common is. injuries, either from, you know, wanting to go too fast, too soon, or other things. And what we were discussing were, you know, like our mutual ailments. And what she described was that, you know, in the past she'd had back pain and the solution to that was, or actually the origin, maybe I should say first, was to be found in bad.
posture, um, an imbalance of muscles and especially an imbalance of the not so huge, smaller muscles that keep our frames [00:02:00] basically upright and in the position that they're supposed to be in, that pull all our bones in towards our core and keep them where they are. To get rid of that back pain, her physical therapist told her to train up a certain, um, muscle in her belly.
But the thing was, it wasn't one of the big muscles that you can feel, you know, when you're doing crunches or sit ups or any of that. It wasn't a muscle that you could feel when you put your hand on the body. It was, it was closer to Let me say close to the spine, closer or is further down in the body. So you could not feel it from the outside.
If you knew where it was, and if you knew how to tighten it, you could feel it from the inside. You needed to be able to figure out which muscle it was first. And something similar [00:03:00] happened to me, so I've been, I'm just going to call it battling because that's what my brain is telling me that it is at the moment of battle.
I've been battling a shoulder injury and an impingement in my shoulder, rotator cuff injury, which is very common in swimmers and especially if, like me, you have a job where you sit a lot, uh, you work at the computer a lot. And you also have, um, an amount of hyperflexibility. Then all of those things together is a combination for disaster.
It also has to do with, again, with posture and with some of those smaller muscles, not, I want to say, keeping your shoulder in check. So it basically moves all over the place and it hurts your tendons. So also for me, the physical therapist said, okay, the way out of this is first of all, to correct your posture and then to train up all those little muscles that you have in your shoulders.[00:04:00]
But first you need to be able to find the correct sort of zero position or the Baseline position for your shoulders, just like for my friend, it would make things easier if she were able to find or isolate that, um, muscle in her belly or in her abdomen in order to be able to train it up. Now you can probably see where this is going because I got the exercises.
And my physical therapist is going like, okay, so this is the base position for your shoulders. And so he's kind of manipulating my shoulders a little bit saying like, okay, right, good. This is it. And of course, as soon as I had to do it on my own, I was thinking I have no idea what this correct position is.
I don't know how to put my shoulders in whatever the base position is because I haven't done it for so long and I can't feel it when it's right. I don't know [00:05:00] where right is. So it's super hard to start doing my exercises because I don't, I don't know what they're supposed to feel like. And my friend also, she mentioned, she said, It took me six months of trying stuff out and of messing and working on my muscles to be able to figure out what that muscle was that her physical therapist was talking about and how to train it.
And the same thing happened to me. I got exercise as I got back to my next physical therapy appointment and I was going like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I think I'm doing it all wrong. And of course my therapist, physical therapist, confirmed that in his very nice Dutch blunt way of saying, yeah, this is, this absolutely sucks.
This doesn't even look like anything. We got to start all over again. Let's try [00:06:00] something else. Let's try a different exercise. Let's try a different way of telling you what that base position is. Fast forward to now where I can find. that base position. And now we can start adding on exercises and adding on more resistance training to train up the muscles that I need to train up.
And then for my friend, after the six months, when she figured it out, like, I think this is the muscle that I need to be training The, her physical therapist could confirm that with an ultrasound and say, yeah, you know, tension that muscle. And then on the ultrasound, you can see the muscle move. So they were doing live ultrasounds to confirm that indeed the, the correct muscle was being trained.
And for me, it was And my physical therapist looking at the position of my shoulder blades and my shoulders and all of that as I was doing the exercises and if I was [00:07:00] keeping the things in the right spot. So I got that external feedback. Now, the thing is, you're probably going to go, where is she going with this?
As always, I promise, you know, this, I will tie it back to our lives with our dogs and our relationships, it would have been easy to say. I don't know where this muscle is. I can't feel this muscle. So, if I can't feel it, then I can't start. And the same for my friend. Now, this is often the case with our dogs, right, and their behavior, and also with the relationship that we have with our dogs.
We're trying to figure out, you know, where is that one muscle or where is that basic shoulder position? Where is that one thing that I need to be able to feel or see that I need to be able to know about to start training? [00:08:00] And here's what tends to happen. We can't find it. We don't know exactly what it is.
We don't know exactly what buttons to push. I want to say on our dogs and on ourselves. in order to change the behavior. And because we don't know what the button is, because we can't isolate the muscle, because we can't find the base position, our inclination is to not start. And of course that makes perfect sense.
If you can't feel it, if you don't know what it is that you have to tweak, then you're not going to start. Then what's the point? I need to know what it is that I need to tweak. So if I don't know what it is that I can tweak. Might as well not do anything, because I need to know that first. So here's the thing, in order to know it, you have to get started.
In order to know where to start, you have to just start [00:09:00] somewhere, as contradictory as it sounds. I just started messing with my shoulders and coming back to the physical therapist and saying, is this it? No, that's not it. Let's try something else. Come back next week. Is this it? Do I have the right base position now?
Uh uh. Maybe on the left, but not so much on the right. Okay, fine, whatever. I just, I don't think I feel it. I don't think I will ever feel it. So you have this despair, but okay, fine. Let's try it again. Let's use a mirror. Yeah, let's use the other tips that I've been given. Until after a while you find The position and you start to feel it.
Okay, I'm back in physical therapy land now, but let me take it back to the dogs. It's the same thing with your dog. It's, I need to find out, for example, what it is that my dog finds rewarding so that I can use that in our training. [00:10:00] But I need to figure out what the rewarding thing is first before I can do any training.
Well if you're gonna wait for that you're never going to find it. So try stuff out. Go and figure out is this it maybe? Is this rewarding for you? Is this? Is this rewarding? And by trying all the stuff out, that's when you figure out, oh, maybe it's food in this situation, but it's play in that situation, it's a bowl in that other situation, and okay, in that last situation, nothing works, so that's still too hard.
But the way in which you find out what is rewarding for your dog is to just start training, to start doing things, to figure stuff out. And in the beginning, you are going to be all over the place. And that's okay. Is this it? Is that's [00:11:00] really how I, what I liken it to. Is this it? Is this it? Is this it? Is this it?
That's sort of the question that is going on in my. Mind. No? Okay, let's try this. Is this it? No? Is this it? Well, a little bit in the right direction. Is this it? What if I add this? What if I mix it up with this? That's how you get going and then still it's not going to be perfect But you will at least have the first thing nailed.
Okay, roughly, for example, if we stay with the the reward Um, example, roughly in this situation, it's food. Roughly in this situation, it's play. Roughly in this situation, it's frisbee. And then you can start working on the other stuff. Then you throw in, I mean, different kind of training, right? You were looking for what's the reward, but [00:12:00] then you start using the reward in training.
You train up You must want to say the bigger muscles, so the other behaviors that you want. And in doing so, you again learn more about what your dog finds rewarding. And you train your interaction, you train your concept or your knowledge. of rewards for your dog. But if you just start making it an intellectual exercise and you sit there and you figure, I gotta figure out what my dog finds rewarding before I can do any training, that's not the case.
It's, you start, you start, and it's probably going to be messy at first. And then after a while you figure out, okay, this is it. And here's the other parallel. There's feedback [00:13:00] given, right? In my case of the shoulder, there was feedback given by my physical therapist who was watching the position of my shoulders.
In the case of my friend, there was feedback given also by means of ultrasound. So, Figure out what the feedback is for you. And the feedback can be you observing things, really listening to your dog, listening to yourself. The feedback can come from other people. The feedback can come from your trainer or from, from other experts, whatever it is, you can use that and figure out, okay, what's the next iteration?
In other words, is this it? No. Yes. Maybe. Getting closer. And then everything starts to build on each other. So in a sense, you isolate the basics, you isolate the one muscle, you isolate what is the base position of the shoulder or, you know, what's the [00:14:00] base reward mechanism, for example, for my dog. But don't take that isolation so literally because the rest of the muscles are still at play, the rest of your training, the rest of your interactions with your dogs also pay a role, or payroll, play a role.
They have, they make a contribution and then things are going to work off of each other or work off of each other. That's not even proper English, but they're, you know, the improvement of one is going to benefit the other part as well. And so this is when you can start building on things, but you have to get started first.
So it's almost like I have to get started to get started. It's a paradox, but then it's not a paradox. And be okay with it taking a while. Be okay with it lasting a bit of [00:15:00] time and allow yourself to feel the frustration because trust me, every time I was going back into that office, I was like, I still don't feel it.
I'm getting so annoyed. You keep telling me that I need to put the shoulder in this position and I just, I don't even know what that is. And that was okay, because I told myself I'm just going to keep trying. I'll try something else. Give me another hint. Let's tweak it. Same thing for my friend, and I hope the same thing for the interactions that you have with your dog, or the interactions that you have maybe with other humans when it comes to your dog.
Figure out what that one thing is. That you need to tweak that will give you the most improvement, but be aware that it might take a while for you to isolate it, to figure it out. And that's okay, because all the other stuff that you're working on is going to help you figure out where you can have the most improvement.
The most [00:16:00] gain, for example, if it comes to your relationships with your partner, like what is going to give you the most gain? Is it learning to speak up for yourself? Is it learning to explain things in a different way? Is it, um, maybe it's acceptance. Maybe it's something else but you've got to get started first.
It may take a while and you need to be listening for feedback in any form. I have the feeling this this may have been a little bit abstract and it may have been a little all over the place but this is how my brain works. In my brain this was a very very clear episode. Maybe from my brain to your ears it is not that clear but I If, if you remember to find the thing to get started on, you simply have to get started on something, then you've probably taken from this [00:17:00] episode what it is that I want to convey.
And then if you realize that that may take a while and that, that it will come with frustration and all of those things, and that that's okay, that the only thing you have to do is to keep tweaking and to keep trying, then that's the second thing. That's you can walk away with. And if you're like, I don't know about this whole frustration piece.
I don't do well with frustration. I don't do well with not knowing. I want to have a plan. I want to know all the things. Then I want to invite you to try coaching because that is what coaching is about. It's about learning to deal with your frustration. You're learning to use it for you. If you're the sort of type A perfectionist, then it's about figuring out in which situations Being that way or acting that way helps you and in which situations that [00:18:00] hinders you and as a consequence hinders the relationship with your dog and your loved ones.
That's what I have for you. If this resonated, if you managed to see through all the sort of warpy thinking and speaking that I've done on this episode, do let me know if it resonated with you. If you have a topic that you would like me to discuss on a topic, also do let me know. Thanks everyone.
You can find the show notes to this episode and everything coaching on my website, kajsavanoverbeek.com, or you can go find us on Instagram @theruscattledog, or maybe even Facebook Kajsa van Overbeek coaching. If you like listening to this podcast, might I ask you for a good review on whichever platform you're listening to the podcast to, because it helps us move up in the rating, which helps us [00:19:00] be found more easily so that more people can listen to this, more people can benefit from it, more people can feel, as I always say, less alone in where they stand with their dogs.