Daily Strategies with TBI.Fitness
Show Notes:
Exercise following a brain injury can be challenging, particularly if we’re comparing our performance to our pre-injury capabilities. Our guest today is the author of the tbi.fitness Instagram account, and, after having sustained a severe traumatic brain injury in 2008, she has learned to recognize her triggers and has found an exercise regime that works for her.
In this episode, we learn about the strategies that have helped to ease her symptoms, and one of her most helpful in-the-moment brain hacks involving a Bluetooth headset! She shares her approach to working out from planning and keeping it simple, to having someone around to hold her accountable. Tune in to discover the overall benefits of exercise for TBI survivors and how to tailor your workouts to your specific needs. And remember, always try to be gentle with yourself!
Key Points From This Episode:
How our guest, author of the tbi.fitness Instagram account, sustained her brain injuries.
The extent of her sustained brain injuries, including paralysis.
Our guest's symptoms post-injury and what she still battles with today.
The strategies that help ease her symptoms.
Why she attributes exercise to her recovery success.
She shares a helpful in-the-moment brain hack!
The benefits of learning your own triggers, if you’re able to.
Tips for approaching exercise post-TBI.
Why our guest advocates for workout modifications.
Why she prefers to focus on total resistance exercise (TRX).
The benefit of having someone present to hold you accountable when working out.
The overall benefits of exercise, particularly for TBI survivors.
The challenge of shifting your mindset and goals around exercise post-injury.
How planning her workouts has helped our guest.
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[INTRO]
[00:00:05] BP: Hi. I'm your host, Bella Paige. Welcome to the Post Concussion Podcast; all about life after experiencing a concussion. Help us make the invisible injury become visible.
[DISCLAIMER]
The Post Concussion Podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post-concussion syndrome. It does not provide, nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussions and post-concussion syndrome.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:04] BP: Welcome to today's episode of the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige, and today's guest who hosts tbi.fitness on Instagram. At the age of 20, she was a passenger in a serious one-vehicle rollover accident that resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury. After a coma, inpatient therapy, outpatient therapy, returning to college, returning to what she could, is now going on 14 years of living with life with brain injury. Now, that life has added in a marriage, a new house, two kids and probably a lot more little things in between. She has learned so many strategies that help herself continue. With TBI Fitness, she shares what those are and hope she can possibly help someone with something that works for her. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:51] FEMALE: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:54] BP: To start, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about the brain injuries you've experienced?
[00:02:01] FEMALE: In August of 2008, I was in a serious single-vehicle rollover. I flew through the windshield the whole nine yards and ended up in a coma, and the injury resulted in a brain injury. It was a severe brain injury or traumatic brain injury, I guess I should say. Then, in that injury, the brain injury, I had a left acute subdural subgaleal hematoma, a diffuse axonal injury, a traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. My left side, I had hemiplegia, so I was paralyzed, basically. I was in a coma for around 10 days. I go all out when I get hurt.
[00:02:46] BP: Yes, you do. You beat me, that's for sure. It's not a competition, but that's like all the list of all the extra injuries or health conditions after is quite the list.
[00:02:58] FEMALE: Definitely.
[00:03:00] BP: And so, after that, what type of symptoms did you start to experience?
[00:03:08] FEMALE: From that, I don't remember a month before the accident until a month after and I forgot everything. Anything you can possibly think of, I forgot it and had to relearn how to do everything again. Things like walking, talking, reading, writing, swallowing, and pretty much everything you can think of that I did before I had to learn how to do again. That was a whole another game of learning, because I like I said, I couldn't remember a month before the accident, but I could remember everything before that. I could remember walking. I could remember talking. I just had no idea how to do it in the moment when they were like, "Here you go, do this." I had no idea. That was a whole mind-blowing experience on top of everything else I was dealing with.
[00:04:03] BP: Yeah. That's so interesting that you could remember. I find one of the hard things about brain injury recovery, and we talk about it a lot on here is that you're learning backwards. Recovery is like you're learning things you already knew how to do. Mentally, it's challenging as well, because you knew how to walk and talk, or you knew how to write or read a book or all these types of things. It's like, you're relearning how to do things you already knew how to do.
[00:04:35] FEMALE: That was a whole another mind game that I wasn't ready for. I could remember doing everything. I just had no idea how I did it. I could see myself in my head walking and stepping and I had no idea how to do that. That was crazy. Then I had all my cognitive things that I struggled with, and so I had memory reissues. My short-term memory is pretty shot. That's like one of my biggest things. Big things that I still have, because I worked with inpatient and outpatient therapy for, I guess, about a year, a little under. I worked with them, and they were great and they help me develop compensatory strategies to help me function and be able to live throughout the day. I still use those strategies daily. It's why I can do what I do is because these strategies are amazing. I put my big things that I still deal with, because I'm going on 14 years. I've had this brain injury for a pretty good amount of my life.
Like I said, I deal with the short-term memory loss. I have mental fatigue. That's a big one, that I – still depends on the day, when it's going to hit harder than not. That's a whole more of another story on top of that. Then I also, from my hemiplegia, I have left-sided weakness and the residual effects that come from that. I also have vision problems that just are part of the nerve damage and all that kind of stuff, and headaches and migraines. That's another big one I have that I didn't have before the accident. Now I do have. I have learned to deal with that, in my own way. Those are my big things that I still have to deal with, that my strategies helped greatly with.
[00:06:35] BP: Yeah. What is an example of one of those strategies that you find helps you on a daily basis or as often as you can think?
[00:06:45] FEMALE: With the Instagram page that I started about TBI fitness, because exercise is my big thing that I have, that I totally attribute to all of my success. Well, most of it, but basically. I really believe on how active I am helps with my things. If not all of them, it's most of them. Another huge thing is also knowing me, and my brain injury and my things, I know what's going to help me. The strategies, like – I relate it to my kids, because I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I know they're things that are going to set them off, and what's going to help bring them back. I do that for myself. I know what's going to trigger me, I guess, and then or just cause like a downward spiral roll effect.
When working out, I know exactly what I do. I wear my Bluetooth headphones, so I usually have those in. I did a post about it, where that's kind of one of my brain hacks that I use for myself. Is if I have those in, people tend to stay away. If they do end up coming up, I will – even if my music isn't on, I'll point to them just so I have a moment to actually think in my head of what did they just say and how I'm going to respond. Then I asked them to repeat themselves, even though I don't need them to repeat themselves.
[00:08:19] BP: That's a good one.
[00:08:21] FEMALE: But I point to my headphones, I'm like, "Oh, sorry. Even though I totally heard everything they said. But that works for me. I'm not being rude. I need a moment for myself. That's one of the in-the-moment brain hacks that I use.
[00:08:37] BP: No, I love it. It's good to give yourself like a time to think. I was laughing the other day. I was in the car with one of my girlfriends, and sometimes I get on tangents talking. It happens on the podcast too. I was like talking about something, then all of a sudden, I don't know if we drove past something or – I joined another conversation in my head, and she just looked at me because I froze like in mid-sentence. She's like, "You were talking about this." I was like, "Thank you for appreciating that I did not remember what I was talking about." Because it happens often to me probably more frequently than the average person. I was just like, "Ah! Well, I know I was talking, but I don't know what about" and I was just going to start talking about like a completely random topic because my brain just like completely will just forget instantly. I'll be like, "Hmm. Okay."
[00:09:34] FEMALE: [Inaudible 00:09:34] where I forget mid-sentence and I totally started a completely different conversation and I don't realize it. Then that's what I – my support circle, that's another huge thing. They know that something I do, so they'll redirect it, or they'll just go with it with some topics and they're like, "Whatever, so we're talking about this now."
[00:09:57] BP: I like that you mention learning your own triggers because it's very different for everyone. But if you can learn them, that's what helped me significantly in reducing my headaches, was learning what caused them and what I could do to avoid them. Or if I knew, "Oh, I did this, so I'm going to get a headache" or "I did this, so tomorrow might be rough." But at least it kind of prepared me mentally for dealing with a lot of this. So like earlier, you said depends on the day and it's very true, a lot of this is a roller coaster. Every single day is different, I know. Some days I can do so much. And then other days, I have no energy to do absolutely anything. It's like an extreme mental fatigue. People don't always understand how tired you can feel after a brain injury, but it's probably the – it is an extreme tiredness. It's like you open your eyes and you pass back out because you can't even sit up.
[00:11:00] FEMALE: Definitely had those days.
[00:11:02] BP: Yes. Exercise has helped a lot in your recovery and we're going to talk a little bit about getting into exercise, types of exercise and all of that. But before that, we are going to take a quick break.
[00:11:15] FEMALE: All right.
[BREAK]
[00:11:19] BP: If you haven't checked out Concussion Connect yet, you're truly missing out on a very close-knit community. I understand how tough financial situations can be post-concussion, so we keep concussion connect as affordable as a cup of coffee a month. If you join today, you can get a free two months to really test it out and see if you belong, which I'm sure you do. So, learn more on our website or check out concussionconnect.com and I can't wait to get to know you.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]
[00:11:55] BP: Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today's guest from tbi.fitness on Instagram. I wanted to get into fitness, of course, and getting into exercise. Do you have any tips for individuals once they've been cleared by medical professionals? How did it start? Because, of course, your body doesn't always work the way it used to. Do you have any tips for that?
[00:12:22] FEMALE: I go back to before the brain injury, I was always fitness oriented. My major in college was human performance and fitness. I always already had that interest, and I still had that after my accident. I still was interested in fitness. It was a whole another game that I had to get into of knowing my limits, and what I could and couldn't do. Because I had my left side issues, and I had my cognitive issues. Then it was a whole new thing, so I had to relearn basically how to exercise and what worked for me, because there were chemical imbalances and all that fun stuff that I had to compensate for.
I just had to learn how to adapt for myself, and what worked for me, and just to overcome what I could, or else, just adapt and just change what worked for me. My biggest thing is modifications. I post about it a lot. Usually, it's a story that someone else put up modifications and says, "If you can't do this, try this." I have a couple Instagrams that I always post or repost their stuff, because they have great tips. I always will advocate for modifications that are great. Me, personally, I do a TRX aspect of my workouts because they're easy for me. I don't have to walk around. I don't have to be distracted, because distractions and just the memory of what I was doing is a huge thing. Because I get distracted and that's a whole another thing of getting myself back to remembering what I was, kind of like what we were talking about with the conversations. That's the same way for my workout. I can't have intense workouts that are full of everything great that I did before, so now I have to have simple things. [0:13:42 INAUDIBLE] are beneficial. I will never not say they are, but I always is like, I can do more. But no, now, I can't do more because I won't remember to do more.
I keep everything very simple. I do simple things. I repeat, basically the same exercises just in different ways, and it works for me. That is great for me. Other people have other things, but this is my thing. My big thing that works for me for exercising is to have someone keep me accountable. Because like I said, I tend to forget and so, if I have somebody there, they will help me get back into it. There, for a little bit, I had a trainer that helped me get back into exercising. And then, because I was in a personal training class, where I was learning how to be a personal trainer, I was already trying to figure out how to do it to myself. I worked with some professors, and they helped me to just kind of reevaluate my life, basically with exercise. We've picked and chose what to do. It worked out, and probably now, my husband is that person. [Inaudible 00:15:05] accountable for. He's always around. We don't work out together, but we go to the gym at the same time, and so he helps. He's just there.
[00:15:54] BP: I have a thing about working out with people. It's really like totally unrelated to my head injuries, I've never loved it. But I really liked that you said that you kind of simplify things or modify things, which is where a trainer can be a huge help. For myself, I worked with them as well. Because trying to find exercises that I could do, or how to adjust exercises, so that I didn't get like a head rush. For me, getting out of bed, if I stand up really quickly, everything goes fuzzy. The same thing would happen is if I like bent over to pick something up, and whipped my head up, everything would go fuzzy, which is dangerous when you're holding weights or exercising in the gym.
Having a trainer and really working to see what worked for me, really helped me because I was able to think about what I wanted to do, and also have someone with me who said, "Oh! Maybe don't do that, maybe that will cause a symptom so that I didn't push myself too far." Because a lot of the time, I wouldn't realize that I was pushing myself and I would just kind of carry on, and get into exercising and all of a sudden, I'd have a headache. Or for example, when this all started, I was in gym class because I was in high school. I started to learn to say, "No." They'd be like running as a warm-up, and I'd say, "No, I can't do that. Can I stretch on the side?" Things like that. Advocating for myself was really huge, because I knew that if I went and ran, I already had a headache before that class started. Being able to modify what I could do and not be ashamed that I wasn't doing what everyone else was doing in my class really helped me with my own competence around my brain injury, and also just help because I find exercising so beneficial to your endorphins, and my attitude and my mood.
Whenever I get out of the habit of exercising, I notice it with fatigue, mental fatigue, and just my mental aptitude around life. Exercise really helps me be more happy, I guess essentially. It just kind of cheers me up. Also, the confidence that you get when you are exercising about your own body can really be helpful as well, when going through something like a brain injury that really can change your mindset about how you feel about yourself.
[00:18:22] BP: It really does help me exercising mentally, physically, and all those types of things. Something we talked about a little bit before was having a good mindset about it. I find one of the things we do a lot is we challenge ourselves almost too much because we expect ourselves to be able to exercise like we did before. We go, "Oh! Well, I used to be a runner, so I want to go outside and run for 5k or 10." But sometimes just realizing that could maybe a walk is still exercise, would be really good for people. How do you go about with mindset and exercising?
[00:19:01] FEMALE: That was huge for me as comparing myself to the before brain injury me to what I was now, because I did do 5ks and runs before and after. But now that I'm this far out from my brain injury, I definitely have taken a step back even farther, because I kept trying to be as good as I was basically before. Now, I've given up that aspect and I don't aim for that goal anymore. I just want to do me basically. I've – like we said before, I don't make things harder than they have to be. Going on walks are fine with me. My runs now are maybe a mile, maybe a little bit over, maybe a little under. But I typically do a mile and that's all I run. I don't try for 5ks or more. We're good with that and that's all I need. I am fine. I don't lift weights really anymore. I just do TRX. I keep it basic, like we all said before, and just not making things harder than they have to be. That helps with my mindset with exercise, as well as with my brain injury. I don't make things harder if they don't have to be. That's everyday life. That's even non-brain injury-related. With my kids, I have, like I said, a five- and two-year-old. Making things hard than they have to be, it's kind of a game you're going to lose with them. They won't let you.
[00:20:40] BP: For sure. I find time is a big thing for me when I exercise. I would say, "Oh! I'm going to work out for this long." But something else that I've learned is that, if I get – maybe a headache comes on, or symptoms, or I get dizzy, I just adjust. Okay. I wanted to work out for half an hour. But maybe the last 10 minutes will be stretching, instead of actually doing a full exercise or a full workout. That's okay, too. I still accomplish my goal, but I don't get hard on myself about not reaching the point that I wanted to and walking. I know a few people have a lot of stimulation or overstimulation issues when they go outside. But walking for me is huge, and just getting my dog that I have now has really helped me because now, it kind of encourages me to go for more walks and more hikes. I find it helps me mentally and physically.
Finding those types of things can really be beneficial because brain injuries can really just do so much to your brain, and your physical ability to do much when you get forced to lay down and do nothing. Even just 10 minutes of stretching, or a small workout can really help you mentally feel better about yourself, about getting something accomplished in a day.
[00:22:06] FEMALE: Definitely. Then also, kind of what's what you're talking about, but I always have a plan. That's what I do now. I can't just wing it anymore just going to the gym. Because before, I could go to the gym because I knew enough where I could be like, "Okay. What am I going to do?" I knew multiple exercises like, "Okay. Well, I'm going to do upper body today. I'll throw in or abort some kind of a workout I can't do." In my head, I have what I'm going to do. I have it on my phone. With the TRX app, there's basically a trainer on there that is talking in my earbuds while I'm working out. I have somebody to keep me accountable that way. They keep me on track, so I know what I'm doing. That always is a helpful thing too. But I have a plan, I know what I'm doing and the plan isn't like crazy. It's very simple. I run, I do TRX, I do abs. That's all I do for my workout. It's all good. Because it's not really an option anymore for me to just wing it, because I tend to just sit there, if I'm just winging it until something like reminds me, "Oh, yeah. I need to move." I can't really try and think of anything on the spot anymore. If I have a plan written down, or have the trainer in my ear, it keeps me on track with everything.
[00:23:38] BP: Yeah, and those apps, there's lots of them. Nike Training Center is a big one too, and they have everything from like yoga, to strength workouts, to no equipment, to full equipment and five-minute workouts to an hour. They walk you through it. They kind of remind you about position and things like that. It can be a great start and then just modify. You might need a second to think, "Okay. Well, they're doing burpees in this workout. Burpees don't really work for me. What can I do instead?" That's okay, too. You don't have to beat yourself up because you don't do exactly what's on the screen. But it can definitely give you ideas and then walk you through like the time of everything so you don't lose track and end up doing one exercise for 20 minutes. But you've given lots of great tips about exercising so far. Is there anything else you would like to add before we end today's episode?
[00:24:35] FEMALE: Not really. I kind of – I would definitely tell people to check out my Instagram page, because I talk about multiple different things. Exercise is my main focus, but I have different brain injury things that I've talked about. For at the start of it, it was kind of all over because I hadn't talked about everything, but now I've talked about everything. So it's mostly exercise-related right now. If something gets me off on a tangent, I go that way. I kind of just ramble, and people seem to – at least they're liking it enough that I am continuing it. Nobody has been mean on it. I'm still doing it. But yeah, it's a wide range of topics that I kind of hit everything, basically. Definitely check that out.
[00:25:24] BP: Yeah, that's wonderful. I just want to say thank you so much. Everyone who's listening, do try to work out maybe today or tomorrow, maybe it'll make you feel better. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about fitness and some of your brain injury experience.
[00:25:42] FEMALE: Thank you.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:25:46] BP: Has your life been affected by concussions? Join our podcast by getting in touch. Thank you so much for listening to the Post Concussion Podcast and be sure to help us educate the world about the reality of concussions by giving us a share. To learn more, don't forget to subscribe.
[END]
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