Moving On

   Last night I moved onto the next two steps of the recovery program. Steps 3 & 4 can be done at the same time. The book says that if any of the exercises are hurting your shoulder, make sure to stop and rest and go back to Step 2 by heating and massaging your shoulder until it does not hurt anymore.

   Step 3 consists of several balance and other exercises that helps your body get back in tune with every part of your body. The idea is to do things that require small movements that may or may not use your whole body. For example, in balancing all of your muscles make tiny movements together to help you keep your balance. All of these tiny movements in all of your muscles helps them work together.

   This step was not very hard to accomplish. The balancing exercises were quite easy and so were the proprioception exercises (i.e. touching nose with finger, etc.). I did not make it through the whole last section of exercises because they were hurting my shoulder a tiny bit. Most of those exercises involved small muscle movements in your shoulder, so I stopped early on those.

   Step 4 consists of stretching exercises for your neck, back, chest, and shoulder. I found these to be very easy to do but harder to hold the recommended 60 seconds because it was pulling weird on my muscles or I didn't know if I had already held it for 60 seconds or not.

   Overall, moving on went quite well for me. It didn't hurt my shoulder very much and I am confident that in the next week I will be able to do all of the exercises in Step 3.