Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

Building Your Function First Habits

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

It’s about that time. That time that our initial burst of enthusiasm to starts to wane. What was once a priority starts to compete again with other urgent (or not so urgent) distractions. Perhaps at the place where the world of instant gratification collides with the unavoidable consistency and progressive nature of improving our health and wellbeing.

I was recently listening to a Tim Ferris podcast with James Clear, the author of the best-selling book, Atomic Habits.

I was struck by how his four principles of developing habits mapped so well with what the strategies we encourage our clients to utilize when approaching their daily does of Function First exercises. Clear’s strategies work well for any habit, including developing a consistent fitness routine.

According to Clear, these four characteristics are key to establishing new habits:

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying.

Clear also suggests, to get even better clarity, make each one of the above points a question. If your goal was to do your Function First program every day, but doing so means adding something to your schedule and changing your routine, you could ask the question, “what is an obvious way to make sure I get my Function First exercises in every day?”.

A possible answer might be to keep your exercise sheet and any props you use somewhere you spend a majority of your time at home or where it will be in your line of site multiple times a day. Put those key elements to your exercises somewhere that they feel like they are almost haunting you every day 🙂


Another strategy espoused by comedian Jerry Seinfeld is his “Don’t Break the Chain” approach. Using just a simple calendar, you check off every day that you follow through on the habit or behavior you are looking to create or strengthen. Every consecutive day that your chain grows longer it grows stronger with increased likelihood that it becomes permanent.

What are your strategies to create the behavior change you desire? Share below!

Stop Lower Back Tightness in 1:00 or Less

Monday, December 14th, 2015

Shopping is one of the activities that we most frequently hear about regarding aggravating our clients’ lower backs. And what do we do during the holiday season? We shop.

The stopping and starting and stopping again. The standing around in long lines with no reprieve for our back muscles.

Couple that with the other stresses associated with the holidays and the factors that can ramp up lower back pain/tightness can get the best of us. So if you are looking for a quick and effective way to reduce tension in your lower back, you’ll want to watch this video.

Derahn shows you how to relax your lower back muscles WITHOUT stretching. It is counter intuitive for most people but it gets the job done because it goes with the tightness instead of away from it.

That’s the good news. It will relax the back muscles and for many people reduce or eliminate upper and lower back pain.

The bad news is that this is not a long term solution. It does not address the many, many bio-psycho-social factors associated with pain.

However, any time you can mitigate the discomfort, keep it from escalating and take control-you are doing something very positive for your long term success.

Try it!

Holiday hurting

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

Today I was thinking about the next educational talk I was going to do for the San Diego community. A great December talk would be on the role holiday stress plays on the increase in musculoskeletal symptoms. But then I realized that same stress is what most people would use to rationalize why they couldn’t make it to the talk!

You can not separate psychological tension from musculoskeletal tension. Pile on an increase in alcohol and sugar consumption, mix in some late nights (less sleep) and you’ve got the holiday recipe for pain production.

If you are a Function First client or are using the exercises from my book, The Pain-Free Program: A Proven Method to Relieve Back, Neck, Shoulder and Joint Pain the holidays are not the time to take a holiday from your exercises. You may need them more now than ever.

Stress is a product of reduced control. Your exercise program gives you control. Keep that in mind now before you get causght up in the worldwind of the holidays.

Best in Health

Anthony Carey M.A., CSCS, CES