Yes, "learning how to do those movements" is a big part of it, and
basically why, once you have trained the movements, you can lose a fair
amount of strength and still basically be able to do the movements after a
long break.
I think this is especially true if you have been doing enough maintenance
work (maybe balance stuff is this for you) and enough adapting of daily
life to your needs (wheelchair use definitely counts; for me, splinting as
soon as I get tired is relevant here, and something I would like to get
better at, I have a tendency to run out of wrists or elbows while away from
home and I don't want to carry splints I'm not using because carrying too
much is one of the failure modes for me) to prevent doing actively harmful
movements instead (the kind of thing that will work at the time, because of
a series of load-bearing errors, but leads to agony/inflammation/etc later
in the week). Um, you can probably tell here that I have zero formal
physiology education. If we say that deconditioning is muscle weakness in
muscles that control safe movement, and malconditioning is when the muscles
that do harmful movements are stronger than the ones that control safe
movements, then I think my general point is that deconditioning plus
malconditioning is going to be worse than deconditioning alone; but after a
point, deconditioning will very often lead to malconditioning. Only it
might actually be specific muscle fibres, or muscle strength in certain
positions, or what have you.
But once you have trained movements that are safe and good, and increase
strength on those movements enough to make them easier than harmful
ones... yeah. Removing the "doing movements that are subtly or overtly
harmful" factor means it's possible to lose a lot more strength before
ending up in trouble.
What many people think of as deconditioning isn't only muscle weakness,
it's also repeated re-injury through not having enough strength or
training to do everyday things without injury; but because the things are
"everyday things" that don't routinely cause soft tissue injury in
mesomobile or other typical-bodied people, the best most medics will do is
go "hmm, that does look/feel inflamed" and prescribe anti-inflammatories
or painkillers so the patient can continue re-injuring themselves. (Which
isn't to say that painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs aren't a useful
and beneficial treatment modality, it's just... if pain is the only thing
that gets treated, there will be diminishing returns.) And of course this
all gets more complicated for people with pre-existing Fatigue Stuff.
The impressive bit, to me, is knowing where your edges are well enough to
go "OK, I can still do this but probably have to concentrate and not go
quite as slowly".
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-22 09:50 am (UTC)Yes, "learning how to do those movements" is a big part of it, and basically why, once you have trained the movements, you can lose a fair amount of strength and still basically be able to do the movements after a long break.
I think this is especially true if you have been doing enough maintenance work (maybe balance stuff is this for you) and enough adapting of daily life to your needs (wheelchair use definitely counts; for me, splinting as soon as I get tired is relevant here, and something I would like to get better at, I have a tendency to run out of wrists or elbows while away from home and I don't want to carry splints I'm not using because carrying too much is one of the failure modes for me) to prevent doing actively harmful movements instead (the kind of thing that will work at the time, because of a series of load-bearing errors, but leads to agony/inflammation/etc later in the week). Um, you can probably tell here that I have zero formal physiology education. If we say that deconditioning is muscle weakness in muscles that control safe movement, and malconditioning is when the muscles that do harmful movements are stronger than the ones that control safe movements, then I think my general point is that deconditioning plus malconditioning is going to be worse than deconditioning alone; but after a point, deconditioning will very often lead to malconditioning. Only it might actually be specific muscle fibres, or muscle strength in certain positions, or what have you.
But once you have trained movements that are safe and good, and increase strength on those movements enough to make them easier than harmful ones... yeah. Removing the "doing movements that are subtly or overtly harmful" factor means it's possible to lose a lot more strength before ending up in trouble.
What many people think of as deconditioning isn't only muscle weakness, it's also repeated re-injury through not having enough strength or training to do everyday things without injury; but because the things are "everyday things" that don't routinely cause soft tissue injury in mesomobile or other typical-bodied people, the best most medics will do is go "hmm, that does look/feel inflamed" and prescribe anti-inflammatories or painkillers so the patient can continue re-injuring themselves. (Which isn't to say that painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs aren't a useful and beneficial treatment modality, it's just... if pain is the only thing that gets treated, there will be diminishing returns.) And of course this all gets more complicated for people with pre-existing Fatigue Stuff.
The impressive bit, to me, is knowing where your edges are well enough to go "OK, I can still do this but probably have to concentrate and not go quite as slowly".