Louis Zantema
24 April 2020
Louis is a GZ-Psychologist with a great passion for gaming. For him, a game training that offers therapy is the most valuable thing you can develop: especially for pain complaints, which are on the interesting intersection of body and mind. His aim is to make himself dispensable as a therapist.
How can you stay in balance and prevent having too much, or actually too little, activity in case of pain?
The balance between tension and relaxation
When you have pain for a longer period of time, it has often become difficult to feel what is still possible. The pain system has become unpredictable, making you feel a lot of pain and not much pain at times.
What often happens is that the balance between tension and relaxation is also disturbed by this. If all goes well, you've kept track of what you've done for a day or more following the previous blog. Today is the next step in regaining your balance.
The 75% rule
The 75% rule means that you will be exercising or relaxing a maximum of 75% of the time and will ensure that there is a good alternation between exercise and relaxation. If you have spent 45 minutes in your household (exertion), you will relax for 15 minutes (sitting or lying down for a while, or doing something else relaxing) before you continue. Or: if you have been lying on the couch for 45 minutes, make sure you do something active for at least 15 minutes.
Try to keep a balance. It doesn't always have to be perfectly divided into an hour. If you now manage to vacuum for 10 minutes, for example, you can also take 5 minutes of rest and then move on.
Keep in mind that you can also cut up tasks, if some tasks are more difficult you can even divide them over several parts of the day or even days. In the beginning this sometimes feels a bit silly, but it can really do you a lot of good for your pain.