Walking discipline

You have the discipline to keep going? Even if something doesn’t go the way you want it to go? I notice myself how difficult I find it to deal with the pain I have and go for walks.

Still I think I should do this. How do I get myself to do this?

Moving with a brace

In January, after suffering with my knee for six months, I decided to go to the family doctor. This one sent me to physiotherapist. Here I got exercises and the first thing was to get rid of the chronic pain. I was faithful to therapy and exercised a lot. On advice I bought a knee brace and put it on when I went for a walk.

This is how I wore it during our week at Disneyland and in Paris. And this went amazingly well, as long as I had the brace on.

I was cured!

After this week I came to the physical therapist with relief and both decided that-if I continued with the exercises and kept the self-discipline in this-I was done with her. I kept exercising at home and went on summer vacation feeling good.

The summer holidays

During the summer vacations we hiked in the mountains. This did not go so well, but I was walking again and that was already nice. After the vacations, when school had started again, I returned to my old rhythm and the pain also returned in all its intensity.

I faithfully did all the exercises again. Cycled on my exercise bike and finally started walking. I feel the discipline is back, but I want to, but I can’t.

Injection at the orthopedist

Actually I wanted to give myself until the autumn vacations, but because the pain was so present, I decided to go to the doctor as early as September. He sent me to the orthopedist. He noted that in addition to the muscles being very weak and causing the kneecap to move, there was also loose cartilage behind the kneecap. He advised me to definitely continue with the exercises and exercise.

Furthermore, I have to try to walk less stairs and certainly no more bending or other stresses on my knee. I got a corticosteroid injection and have to come back in six weeks.

Discipline in walking

Now that the orthopedist also told me that walking is good for me, I have to start again. And although I love hiking in the mountains. Here at home, on my own I do not like it.

Because it is important that I do this, I have some things that I stick to in order to get the discipline of moving back into my daily routine.

• I have two fixed mornings when I go walking
• That morning I immediately put on my walking clothes (jogging pants), then I have to go
• I do this also because then it doesn’t matter if I sweat a little when walking and I really build up my condition a bit more
• I put on headphones with music while walking, that already makes it less boring
• On weekends I take the husband and children for walks
• I take care of good shoes.

Good shoes

For my knee, it is important that I wear good shoes. If you look deep into my heart, you will see that I prefer to wear heels as high as possible. I just haven’t been able to do this for a long time. Nowadays I wear more and more special shoes for hiking. Today’s hiking boots can easily be worn under a skirt or dress.

And are available in both high and low model. Plenty of choice. I wear these while walking, but they also work well if I do a lot of walking or go shopping during the day.

Do you have any tips for me to get the discipline back and make walking ‘more fun’?