The 6 to 8 week Rule….
I injured myself two months ago. I ignored the signs NOT to engage in a ridiculous Sumo deadlift. I noise-canceled the words emanating from every inch of my body, telling me, No! Don’t do it! Don’t lift that weight. Can’t you hear me?
But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Ignore the signs?
“I’m exhausted, but I have to stay up anyway.”
“My knee hurts, but I should run anyway.”
“It doesn’t feel good to bend this deeply to lift this weight, but it’ll be fine… I’ll do it anyway.”
And then we get to the other side. The injured side. The sick side. And we say to ourselves, I knew it. I felt it. I ignored it.
It’s happened to all of us. We’ve all been injured, and when we are down for the count, our pendulum inevitably swings into impatience rather quickly. It doesn’t take long to start feeling like we should be better by now—to find ourselves repeatedly worried by that whisper in our stomach wondering if we’ll ever get better, and vividly imagining what we’ll do if we’re “like this” forever.
After 25 years of chiropractic practice, helping people and seeing them through their back, neck, shoulder, knee, ankle, and hip injuries, it’s amazing how easily the reassuring words I know are true in my heart are forgotten the moment I myself am injured.
The unequivocal principle that there is no process that doesn’t take time and that even with access to the best of conditions, healing always takes time. Predictably, with most injuries, that time is exactly 6–8 weeks.
Being pain-free prior to the end of this 6–8 week period doesn’t preclude us from this time principle. Pushing it before our body is done with its healing project makes us vulnerable to reinjury. And because we are in a rush to get back to what we were doing, reinjury happens frequently. Even the best athletes and the hardest of workers consider rest and recovery as part of their training, as part of getting better.
I write this because I was in this injury boat, inching along all too slowly. But at exactly the 8-week mark, I found myself mostly healed and largely better, even though at week 5, I was losing hope that I would ever enjoy my favorite things again.
The worry trap happens to us all. And for those who are presently working on a healing project, here, I offer you a dose of hope and trust and patience.
And for those who feel amazing and unstoppable, feel free to just put the 6–8 week trust in healing rule in your pocket for a later time, when you might need it.