For quite a few years I suffered from lower back pain. At times the pain got so strong that I needed to take Voltaren or any other anti-inflammatory pills to deal with it. I visited several doctors and they all said they couldn’t find anything wrong with my body. I had X-rays taken as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) but they couldn’t see anything in there. They prescribed pain killers and lots of rest.
One day a friend recommended me his wife’s physiotherapist. The clinic was quite far from home but since they were going there in a few weeks time I decided to join them so I called and asked for an appointment to give it a try.
The day arrived and when it was my turn I explained to this guy all the symptoms and showed him all the X-rays, MRIs and tests I got taken. He explored me a bit and concluded “You have nothing. Your body is perfectly fine. What you need is a bit of rehab for getting back the mobility in some of the joints and then exercise as much as you can“.
“So, Can I practice sports?” I asked him. “Not only you can but also you must. Your problem is not that there is something wrong with your body, your problem is that you spend too much time sitting on a chair and not moving enough“
I couldn’t believe it. That was really good news for me. I love sports and he told me I could practice sports as much as I wanted.
For me this was a turning point. From that day I approached sports in a different way. Instead of something fun that you do if you have time, from that moment on I also saw it as “prescribed by my doctor“. So instead of the prescription being “Take these pills for 2 weeks” now it could be more in the lines of “Climb these two mountains in the next two weeks“
Any activity is good, it doesn’t necessarily need to be sports. Some people may like gardening, some may like dancing or some just walking their dogs. As for sports, some are more enjoyable than others. I find hiking, skiing, tennis or soccer more enjoyable than running, swimming or going to the gym but unfortunately they are not always easily available and I must always do something, because “It has been prescribed“. It’s either I do this or I suffer the pain and the consequences. Either I do it now on my terms or I do it later on someone else’s terms.
Since I have chosen the former I get to decide what to do and when.
I started running since it’s the easiest of all, you only need a pair of running shoes. Later I joined a gym. These two activities are quite boring but I kept quite consistent with them since “They have been prescribed“.
To add some variety I introduced swimming but didn’t really help with the boring issue. I tried to make it a bit more interesting by swimming in the sea. Very early in the summer mornings, when the sun was still deciding whether to get out of bed or not, I got into my tiny speedo and after overcoming the initial cold water shock the rhythmic movements started: Left arm, right arm, left arm, right arm.
Several minutes later the darkness below me had turned into a beautiful scenery of Posidonia and peaceful fish wandering around. Jellyfishes also joined the party from time to time.
Looking for more enjoyable alternatives I gave hiking a try. I always liked going up mountains but I didn’t like having to look for the routes, printing the directions and details and then I was usually getting lost since some of those directions were fairly vague, “Turn left on the big tree“.
One day I discovered the GPS and the world has never been the same again for me. I never considered buying a GPS before because I thought it will be another complicated device to learn and use. I just wanted to have easy walks on the mountains where I could relax and disconnect my mind. I couldn’t be more wrong, using a GPS was just like following the proverbial white line on the ground. It gave me the feeling of walking over the footprints of the person who recorded the tracks I was following. It was like I always had a mountain guide next to me and I could not get lost anymore.
With this boost of confidence I started going out to the mountains more often. In Alicante (Spain), where I was living at that moment, there are quite a few mountains, they are not that high but there are quite a few of them. I started climbing the best known ones: Aitana, Puig Campana, Cabezón de Oro or Maigmo. When I was climbing them I realized I had climbed them all before. Either while in the military service or with friends although up to that point they were all anonymous mountains for me. Now I started knowing them by name and also, since now I had the GPS tracks recorded I could throw them all in Google Earth and see how far where they from each other. With those new insights I started recognizing all the ones in sight when I was at the top of one of them or when I was driving on a road or landing when flying on a commercial aeroplane.
Slowly I started venturing outside of the Alicante province in pursuit of new landscapes and exciting adventures. During the summer holidays I often went to the Pyrenees mountains in the north of Spain. I highly recommend visiting the little village of Torla and hiking inside Ordesa national park. It doesn’t get much more beautiful than that.
A few years later my job required me to move to Madrid. Lots of new mountains suddenly became so close by that I started visiting them on the weekends: Peñalara, Bola del Mundo, La Maliciosa, Siete Picos, Pico del Lobo, …
Some time later I had a great idea, I will set myself a goal. I will climb the highest mountain in every province in Spain. That was a perfect excuse for getting to know my own country. I always wanted to go to magnificent places like Cordoba or Merida but always found excuses not to do it. Now I found the perfect excuse to do it.
Fast-forwarding a bit, on August 14th 2018 I summited Torre de Cerredo. This mountain brought my project to a conclusion. I felt so happy but also sad at the same time. I had climbed so many mountains, visited great places and had wonderful experiences but now I was out of a goal. I didn’t have anything to challenge me and look forward to anymore. I needed a new project.
It took me a bit of time but when I had to move to live in the city of Eindhoven (The Netherlands) I saw it crystal clear. My next goal was going to be climbing the highest mountain in every European country. This project was much more ambitious. Lots of new countries to visit and new adventures ahead. I was very excited again.
There are some periods in life when things are easier. You make some plans, you work hard on them and things get through. But there are also some periods when nothing seems to go well. You are an insignificant dot and still, it feels like the whole universe is conspiring against you. For these moments I find it useful to look back. The general feeling is for things to be moving painstakingly slow but looking back helps me get perspective and realize all that I have achieved so far.
In this regard I find it useful to log what I do because I cannot trust my memory that much, in general, and even less in those low moments when the mind distorts reality. Data never lies (unless you want it to).
For hiking I started recording the mountains and the routes I was doing using text files, Excel sheets and also manually placing pins in maps showing my progression.
Currently I’m getting through one of those low moments. It’s been a year and a half since Covid-19 pandemic exploded and travelling has been highly restricted. The closest to hiking nowadays is walking upstairs to go to the bedroom. Since there weren’t many alternatives, I decided to employ all that extra time at home to move those Excel sheets and maps to the web. It was a lot of work but now that it’s done not only it’s easier for me to log my activities but also some other people can now benefit from it. Back From Summit is how I decided to call the site.
Looking at my European Project, I still have 35 pending out of the 52 mountains. This summer, once fully vaccinated, I plan to resume my trips and hopefully cross 5 to 10 mountains off the list. I can already envision it, driving on a mountain road, with my dog Huka sleeping next to me in a fully equipped campervan.
The best is that it has been prescribed by my doctor. This is a nice prescription, a prescription that makes you feel good, shapes your body nicely and adds wonderful experiences and unforgettable memories to your life. Also a deep sense of connection with nature or to the friends you bring along.
Since these activities have been prescribed, I wonder if the cost could be reimbursed by Social Security Care. It will be cool to have free membership at the gym or the swimming pool. A nice way to reward good behaviour.
What about you? how do you nudge yourself into good habits?
Is there any trick you use that we could benefit from as well?
By the way, if you are curious about the name of the physiotherapist who brought me back to normal life you can find his clinic here.