Meet Carol. She’s a retired 75-year-old nurse, and just a few short months ago, she was scheduled for a knee replacement surgery. Why? Pain. Lots of it. Because of severe degenerative arthritis. Fast forward to now, and her surgery’s been cancelled. Why? She’s not in pain anymore, and she has full function of her knee – full strength and full range of motion.

               Not to mention that her knee was the worst, but the rest of her body wasn’t great either. Her hips hurt, her lower back hurt, her shoulder hurt so much that she couldn’t raise it above 90 degrees. Now, it’s all pretty much history.

               How did she do it? That’s exactly what will cover in this article.

        You can expect to learn:

  • What Carol’s life was like before
  • What she’s tried before to help her get out of pain
  • What approach we used with her to eliminate her joint pain
  • How her life is different now, that she’s pain free

And if you’d like to hear Carol tell her own story, just check out the video below:

If you’d like to get some personal help with your joint pain, we have a special program, called “Joyous Joints.” To see whether or not you qualify for this program, just fill out the application form on our home page.

What Carol’s Life Was Like Before

               Carol has a really good life in retirement. She likes to sew, walk her cat, and does a lot of charity work. Unfortunately, when you’re in chronic pain – everywhere – it takes away a lot of your pleasure in the activities you like to do.

               For instance, as soon as she woke up, she would automatically take 2 pain pills. She’d wake up in pain, and she anticipated even more pain in the next few minutes. So before the pain got worse, she’d take 2 right away.

               And because of the pain, a lot of her motion was severely restricted, to the point where she needed help getting dressed in the morning.

               When you hurt, it’s also difficult and daunting to move. So she spent a lot of her time on the couch.

               After the effect of the morning pain pills wore off, she’d take more pain pills. All in all, she was taking 6-8 pain pills per day.

               She’s also gone for imaging, and test results showed that she had severe arthritis in her knee. So she was scheduled for a knee replacement surgery. Sure, that would address her knee pain, but what about everything else – her hips, lower back, and shoulders? Was she going to get a 4-in-1 deal, where in 1 day, she replaces each of her joints, and becomes the bionic woman?

               As if that wasn’t enough, she used to get severe muscle cramps that lasted over 30 minutes, and in her own words, made her wish that she was dead.

               That was just no way to live. She’s also tried a couple of different approaches to pain relief, like…

What She’s Tried Before to Get Out of Pain

               Besides the pain pills, Carol also tried compression socks, but the problem was that they’re difficult to put on. And furthermore, it was just symptomatic relief. It wasn’t a long-term solution. Nothing wrong with symptomatic relief – and it should be done while you’re working on the root cause, but it shouldn’t be the long-term solution in and of itself.

               She also tried group fitness classes, but there were 3 problems:

  • Whatever they asked her to do – she couldn’t do it because of the pain.
  • They weren’t sensitive to her pain, and she was told to just push through it (and that made it worse).
  • It wasn’t personal for her… which makes sense. Group fitness classes are not meant to be personal.

Eventually, before she gave up hope, she decided to try online personal training. She had a bunch of goals:

  • Decrease knee pain
  • Decrease hip pain
  • Decrease back pain
  • Decrease shoulder pain, and improve range of motion
  • Decrease cramps
  • Improve core strength

Having been a long-time subscriber of my newsletter, she attended one of my webinars (on exercise for chronic conditions), liked what I had to say, and signed up with her online personal trainer, Konstantinos.

What really appealed to her about online personal training is that there was no driving required. Everything was in her own home, with the equipment that she already had (which was just dumbbells and resistance bands – bare bones).

Lots of people wonder whether online personal training is as effective as in-person training. And it is. The majority of our case studies from the last few years were from online training clients, like:

…and a bunch of others.

               So once we decided that this was a good approach for Carol, we set her up with her trainer, Konstantinos, and they got to work.

Carol’s Exercise Program

               After we did Carol’s initial assessment, Konstantinos built her exercise program, and took her through the proper progressions to get her pain-free.

               Here are some of the highlights of Carol’s program:

Wall Squats

Carol was in a bit of a catch-22. On the one hand, she needed to strengthen her thigh muscles to get out of pain. But on the other, her knees hurt when doing traditional strengthening exercises for her thighs.

What’s the solution? Contraction without motion. So Konstantinos had Carol doing wall squats, which are a static exercise for the quads (the muscles on the front of the thighs).

At first, Carol couldn’t go down very low, but as her quads got stronger, and her brain felt safe enough to decrease the pain, she was able to go lower and lower against the wall, until she was able to hit the needed 90-degree angle.

Knee Bending and Straightening

               The wall squats work the quads. But there’s more than just the quads that affect the knees. There are also muscles on the backs of the thighs (hamstrings). Those needed strengthening as well, in order to have balanced forces and support around the knees.

               So Konstantinos had Carol tie a resistance band around different objects around the house (like a table, chairs, etc.). She would loop the band around her ankle, and either bend or straighten the knee, as the resistance band is resisting her.

               This again helped strengthen the muscles around the knees, without aggravating the knees.

               The goal of exercise is to be challenging to the muscles, but easy on the joints.

Band Low Rows

               This is an exercise that works the mid-back (mid-trapezius and rhomboids). Why did Carol need that? Because she had a rotator cuff tear that prevented her from raising her arm up overhead. Which really limited what she could do. After all, to open cupboards that are high up, you need to raise your arm over your head.

               One common mistake made in physiotherapy is only focusing on the rotator cuff. Rookie mistake. Very often, when the rotator cuff gets damaged, it’s because it was trying to work too hard, and compensate for muscles that aren’t working hard enough – like the mid-back muscles.

               So you strengthen the mid-back muscles in conjunction with the rotator cuff, you improve shoulder function, and decrease shoulder pain.

Y

               Yep, this exercise is just a single letter. It’s the Y from the song “YMCA.” Because in this exercise, you simply raise your arms in the same position as you do the dance move.

               What does that do? It strengthens yet another muscle in the mid-back, called the “lower trapezius.”

               All these muscles help stabilize the shoulder blade while the arm is moving. No stability, and you get rotator cuff problems.

External Shoulder Rotations

               And finally, an exercise directly for the rotator cuff – the one that gets all the glory, but is really just part of a team.

               External rotations strengthen 2 of the 4 rotator cuff muscles: the supraspinatus and the teres minor.

Planks

               Planks are an exercise for the abdominals, because one of Carol’s goals was core strength. Plus, you strengthen a weak core, and you get some carryover effect to over muscles, without directly working them, like the back, shoulder and chest muscles.

               So in one exercise, it had benefits for several of Carol’s issues:

  • Her hips
  • Her lower back
  • Her shoulder

There was a lot more to it than that, but these are the highlights of her program.

But if you just read about the exercises, you’d miss the “secret sauce” of the exercise program – the progression model, and the workout-by-workout adjustments that were made based on Carol’s progress from the previous workout, energy/fatigue levels, injuries, and more. After all, no exercise program should be a static program, where you’re doing the same exercises for the same weights, sets and reps every single time. An exercise program should be dynamic, intelligently, purposefully, and systematically changing the exercise variables workout-by-workout to move the client forward… as opposed to haphazardly changing the program whenever you feel like it, without rhyme or reason… like a lot of personal trainers do.

Carol’s Results

               Over the 5 months that Carol has been working with Konstantinos so far, here is the progress that she’s seen:

  • Her plank improved from 25 seconds, up to 45 seconds, and at progressively lower angles as her abdominals got stronger.
  • Her wall squats improved from 30 to 50 seconds, and also at progressively lower heights as both her quads and knees improved.
  • Y shoulder exercise improved from 1 kg to 3 kg – her rotator cuff tripled in strength.

How Her Life is Different Now

               Nowadays, Carol’s life is completely different than it was before she started working with us. You can sense the elation that she feels when she describes all the ways she’s better now than 5 months ago, in her video.

               For instance:

  • That knee replacement surgery that she was scheduled for – she cancelled it. There’s no longer any pain in her knee, and it’s back to full function – normal strength and normal range of motion.
  • ALL of her joint pain is completely gone – her hips, lower back and shoulder – totally fine now.
  • Speaking of her shoulder. You know how she couldn’t raise her arm over 90 degrees? After about 3 months, without thinking, she reached up to open the cupboard, and realized “you’re not supposed to be able to do that.” But she did. And it was pain-free.
  • She’s regained a lot of her independence. She can dress herself now!
  • She used to take 6-8 pain pills per day. Now, she’s down to less than 1, and that occasional pill is not even for her joints. Just the occasional migraine.
  • She can get down and up off the floor, pain-free. Something not a lot of 75-year-olds can do.
  • She now enjoys her day instead of suffering through it.
  • She no longer gets crazy cramps.

All in all, she’s come a really long way in her 5 months with us so far, and we’re very proud of her.

If you’d like to get some personal help with your joint pain, we have a special program, called “Joyous Joints.” To see whether or not you qualify for this program, just fill out the application form on our home page.