Start Here: Default to Movement
The most significant mindset shift I had to make during my recovery was learning to default to movement. For most of my life, the main advice I got for any injury from health and medical providers was almost always the same: rest. I was told to rest for nearly a year in fifth grade, dealing with Osgood-Schlatter's. Later, it was my knees, or my elbow, or something else—and the answer was almost always rest.
And, if the answer wasn't rest, then it was usually low-level movement that was just supposed to almost magically "fix me." There was never a clear, systematic, whole body progression back to high activity levels and the ability to have the adventures I loved.
Rest is important, and sleep and recovery are crucial. But the body doesn't heal through rest alone. It heals and adapts through movement. Movement brings blood flow, drives lymphatic drainage, helps tendons remodel, and adapts bones. Even cartilage in the knee responds to walking. Movement gives the body the inputs it needs to recover.
Additionally, regarding movement and body health, there is a lot of language surrounding how movement will break you down—overuse injury, wear down, break down, etc. These are all possible outcomes of movement, but much less frequently discussed is how movement stimulates your body for growth—making not only muscles stronger but also telling the body to build up your bones, fascia, cartilage, brain, and even helping your digestive system work better.
This sounds crazy, but it is true:
I was in an appointment at a highly respected rheumatology clinic during the peak of dealing with my systemic illness, getting the results of my lab work. While the doctor told me I didn't not have rheumatoid arthritis (thank goodness), he also told me that I just had osteoarthritis in many joints of my body. He then proceeded to tell me and I quote, "You were just too much of a jock - you should have just sat on the couch more."
What matters is finding the right level, load, type, and form of movement. And that can be tricky—especially when you have spent years defaulting to rest, not motion. Shifting out of that mindset takes time. There is often fear, uncertainty, and second-guessing. But when you learn how to match movement to your body, everything changes. That is when you start to see real progress.
We are going to start rebuilding that foundation. We will begin with the exploring the ways in which movement builds us up and is a requirement for human function from head to toe, inside to out. Then, in future weeks, we will dig into how to start "defaulting to movement" or building a "movement growth mindset" and then put all these into action in the context of your own life.
In her book, Move Your DNA, Katy Bowman has a beautiful example of how crucial movement is to our health. Her simple example looks at the fin of orcas in captivity versus in the wild. The fins of orcas in captivity, who only have access to a small amount of constrained movement and limited loads, have the classic "Free Willy" flop and don't stay upright. However, the fins of orcas in the wild, who experience much more movement and the variable loads of the open ocean, stand up straight!
The fundamental process that coverts this mechanical loading into cellular change is called mechanotransduction.
There is a large body of research that shows movement triggers a cascade of adaptations across all body systems.
Lets walk a nature trail together through some of the main adaptations from movement. This is by no means comprehensive, but should be enough to clearly illustrate the point - movement matters ("Movement Matters is also the name of another amazing Katy Bowman book ;-). Just like a nature trail, stop to read the sign in detail when it catches your eye, otherwise just skim it and keep on going to get the main gist of what is going on around you.
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