“Pretend-Injury” Time Off

Taking a break before you break

This week’s post is something I wrote for the Graduation Handbook of my course. It describes how to apply the DSY principle on a “life scale”. Below it, I’m also sharing a comment from my BMC member David, who gave a perfect illustration of how it could (and should) be applied":

Let’s talk about deliberately stepping back, what I call a “pretend-injury” time off.

The idea is simple. And you probably know this from experience: you feel so great that you keep pushing it. Your body eventually protests (sometimes violently) and you’re forced to stop. And you are in pain for a few weeks. Why wait for that moment? Why not take the time off yourself, on your own terms, and enjoy it pain-free?

Some fitness influencers talk about constantly improving, about always adding weight, “exploding” their pecs or what may. They talk about pushing the boundaries of human abilities. That path may sound heroic, but it’s insane and is also a clear road to injury. The truth is that no one can improve forever. Eventually, the body demands a pause. Pretend-injury time can be that pause, instead of a real injury. Preemptive and deliberate.

This doesn’t mean completely stopping everything. Certain anchors remain non-negotiable: stretching in bed, Radio Taiso and slow jogging (closer to 20 minutes than to 50). These are your cornerstone exercises, small maintenance procedures that keep your body happy and engaged.

Life itself often provides the cues: the changing seasons, unexpected chores, a burst pipe, or a broken water heater. These are annoying obstacles to life’s not-so-smooth sailing but they are also invitations to let go. Take them. Allow yourself to slow down. Your body, unlike a machine, moves in ebb and flow. The carpenters of Edo respected this rhythm: they didn’t work in winter or when it rained. Just go with it and be guilt-free about it.

You can just chill or you can explore in that time things for yourself that are new and fun and easy on the joints (and can be done at the niko-niko pace while adhering to the DSY principle). One of you suggested rope flow to me. That does sound like fun. Or just walk and be chill. I practice something I call MF, for manual (or meditative) focus when I let my eyes focus far and near on everything I can find. It’s fun to realise that there are so many things in your surroundings that you have stopped seeing. The list of ideas is long and only limited by our imagination. I hope you’ll contribute yours in the comments.

The reward of the “pretend-injury” time is that you rest before rest is forced upon you, and you get to enjoy it in good form and not in pain. When you re-enter your practice it’s with strength, energy, and gratitude.

And here is David’s response

“Hi, Pawel. I’ve just come off a three-and-a-half week break from several parts of my routine: slow jogging, Sendyka sprints, and dead hang. This was occasioned by an unusual weather event for my area, which saw a fairly thin layer of very cold arctic air near the surface surmounted by a slowly moving warm, wet front from the southwest, resulting in a 24-hour period of snow followed by sleet followed by freezing rain. The result was a thick and slippery layer over everything of what local weather reporters were calling “snowcrete”. It was impossible to clear with normal snow shovels. People were resorting to axes, hammers, and even chain saws to cut through this stuff. Given that, sidewalks and many roads were basically impassible.

The temperatures stayed below freezing for the better part of two weeks after the storm, so there was very little melting and it was pretty dangerous to try walk or move over the ice. I heard an interview with an emergency department nurse soon after the storm and she said that they had seen over 40 people that day, all for either fractures from falling on the ice or for heart attacks from trying to clear it. Needless to say, during all this I could not do my regular slow jogging or sprinting, nor could I get to the playground where I do the dead hang.

But as it happened, this post about taking a break appeared as all this was going on, so I took your advice and didn’t worry about it. I did, however, keep up with Radio Taiso, some isometrics, and a few minutes of Asian squatting each day. Also, I finally tried out the animal movements, one of the few parts of your method that I hadn’t yet attempted. After a bit of awkwardness, I’m getting better at these and starting to have fun with it. I like the gorilla walk the most. And yesterday, with the weather having warmed up and almost all the snow and ice finally gone, I got back out for a slow jog and a dead hang and it felt great.”

Good job David, for enjoying your forced time off guilt-free.

And what about you? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Do you have a story of how your body (or circumstances) told you to pause and you listened (or maybe a cautionary tale when you didn’t)?

Let me know.