The Safe Ex Challenge

Home / Latest News / The Safe Ex Challenge

Watch exercises our professionals recommend to help keep you moving for life!

PIlates bridgeWe want you to practice Safe Ex!  During the pandemic many of you have given up exercises, increased your walking to 15,000 steps or suddenly subscribed to on-line classes.  Our Virtual appointments are telling us that you are getting injured by doing too much or too little.   We want you to stay active and be safe physically, mentally as well as virally.

Creative ways to Exercise

That’s why we have challenged our therapists to come up with creative ways to exercise while we are social distancing/isolating. See the links below for their videos and remember we are asking you to vote on them so they can win a prize!

As we go along we will be adding to this by sharing exercise links that we like and let you know why we like them.

And we will continue to provide you video’s on exercise through this page.  To continue with our theme of everyday activities and How Not to Get Hurt Doing Almost Anything we will be adding videos with specific techniques on how to do your exercises without getting hurt.

Tips for practicing Safe Ex

Tip #1 Exercise with professionals who understand your body.

Work with your therapist or have your therapist provide parameters for your fitness people.  Take classes from the people you worked with before the pandemic as you know the technique and the level of the demand is right for you.  Many of them are on-line providing classes or Virtual

Tip #2 Stop exercising when you feel fatigued.

Technique matters more than reps.  When your technique falls apart the joints start to get injured.

Tip #3 Avoid Group Ex.

If you are just returning to fitness a group situation often encourages you to do more than you’re ready for or is too fast when you don’t fully understand the technique.  Start with one-on-one with a personal trainer who understands your needs or exercise on your own with a program provided by your therapy team.

Tip #4 Don’t increase your program too quickly.

Find a baseline program that works for you – no increased pain or joint strain but your muscles are being worked.  Then increase it by 10-15% every week.  If this is to much go back to your baseline and increase a bit slower (5-10%).  If you still can’t seem to progress – discuss this with your therapy team as often a small tweak to the program will  get you back on track.

Tip #5 Recognize that daily fitness is not better than 3 x per week.

You can walk daily and practice your therapy activation strategies daily but don’t do the same fitness program everyday.  Either plan for day on day off or split the program into two i.e. alternate upper body and cardio with core and lower body.

Tip #6 Speak to your therapist when you are ready to leave the therapeutic nest

Once you are feeling better and your therapy program is controlling your pain there is more work to do to get you back into life without re-injuring.  This is the ideal time to speak to your therapist about next steps:

  1. Who should you exercise with? Your therapists can recommend good group exercise studios or personal trainers who are known to respect underlying conditions.
  2. Where to do Safe Ex? Discuss whether you should be in the pool, a gym or are best on your own.
  3. How often to do your program? See Point 5
  4. What type of Safe Ex is best for you? Gym and weights vs. Pilates/Yoga etc.
  5. Why do Safe Ex? Because you will feel great for it!!

Click on our youtube icon YouTube channel to join our Safe Ex Challenge