From rehabilitation to rebuilding

From rehabilitation to rebuilding. Getting back into the fitness activities of life after an injury is often a hugh challenge. If, like me, you also struggle with fatigue due to brain injury, it's not just about the physical, but a lot about overcoming the challenges of fatigue.

• Learn: Learn about your body and mind, Learn about your options, possibilities, your abilities. Learn from healthcare, physiotherapist and or other people around you, do your own research.
• Understand: understand your challenges, both possibilities, abilities and or limitations. Understand your body and mind. Learning and understand is the basic to start you journey. You need to know where you come from to know where you want to go.
• Change: you need to change your mindset and habits, change your lifestyle, it's not a short vacation its the rest of you life we talking about, how do you want to live it.
• Adapt: Adapt to your new mindset, new habits and patterns. Nothing changes until you want to adapt it to your life. We often change small things in our lives – it is a constant in life, and we change slowly throughout life. Bigger and immediate changes are so much harder to adapt to, we tend to resist them.

Yes, from rehabilitation to rebuilding physical activities. It's about learning, understanding, changing, and adapting. Not necessarily in that order, but in general there can sometimes be a lot of back and forth.

How did I do it?

The first 8 to 10 months after the accident I struggled to be active, a lot because cycling was my passion and what used to be my motivation to be active, and I couldn't ride after the accident. My head, my body wouldn't work like before, and I didn't understand why. So I walked a lot in the woods around where I live, luckily I live in a place where I have easy access to woods and mountains. I knew I had to be active, both to maintain my physique, but also for my mental health, so I needed to get out into nature, for me nature is the best medicine there is, the best place to restore myself, keep my mental health in shape.

So I knew that getting outside and being active was and is incredibly important for healing the body and soul. This is what I have done most of my life. Being active in nature has always been my form of meditation when I needed to recover from stress, a bad period or just to renew my energy. Whether it was hiking, cycling, swimming or various winter activities. Just being out in nature is so important for the body and soul, it is pure mental healing.

Getting back on my bike was my biggest dream, cycling has been, and still is my passion, and I think that because the reason I was grounded, was a bike accident, It was also important for me to prove to myself that I could get back on the horse.

So I needed to learn

The first part of the learning process for me was learning why I struggle to ride a “regular” bike. Once I had that learning in place, I needed to start exploring and learn new ways and opportunities for biking.

And after 10 months almost without cycling, I was almost desperate to get out on a bike again, so I started to wonder if an electric bike could be a solution..., it wasn't easy for an old hardcore cyclist to crawl to that cross😳, electric bike was almost a curse word in the cycling community I was used to. But I did, the challenge was that a lot of what I found on Norwegian websites, various Norwegian tests of electric bikes was not what I wanted to ride, a certain form of pride was still there😁. But thanks to and for YouTube I found a cycling community out in the world that rode bikes I wanted, with a focus on eMTB cycling. So after about 12 months my first eMTB finally arrived on my doorstep, and a whole new world and not least to be experienced with it, my life starte again.

Starting the process of finding, deciding and finally buying an eMTB was an incredibly demanding process for me. The whole process took about four months. During that period I experienced a lot of different emotions and challenges, such as extreme fatigue, anxiety, uncertainty both financially, having to spend so much money, when my future was unclear in all areas, uncertainty about whether I would be able to choose a bike that I wanted and could use. All the feelings I know now are related to I have major challenges with fatigue, difficulty concentrating, emotional instability and more that are related to that I had an acquired brain injury. I didn't know it then. I managed to do it because I was able to break the task down into small pieces over a longer period of time. Today I know that Is how I have to do tasks going forward, that this is what it is like to live with an acquired brain injury. But at the time, I just felt embarrassed that I was having such a hard time making a decision, and all the feelings I have around it, at the time, I didn't dare tell anyone how I felt, I was embarrassed about who I was.

Finally I was ready to cycle again, after almost a year without having been on a bike ride, I managed to get out into the mountains, where my happy places, my energy filling stations, are located. For me, it meant that my strength was starting to come back. I heard when I got to Sunnaas some months later that they had spoken to my ex-wife, who told them that she experienced that when I could cycle again, she saw that I lit up, my mood came back, my strength and motivation increased, I got my spark back. After a long, long time where I failed at almost everything I try, everything I used to be able to do, I finally mastered something again. That feeling of being able to succeed again, mastering things again, is so incredibly important in a rehabilitation phase. I have always believed that mastering tasks is very important for making people grow, it makes people feel happy, and happiness gives energy to people, and gives strength to keep fighting even on the darkest days of life.

Being active and mastering task is often a big challenge when you are hit by an accident or illness, I for one lost faith in myself, felt that I was useless, was not good at anything anymore, lost my self-esteem. Being active increases self-esteem and self-confidence by releasing “happy hormones” such as endorphins and dopamine, provides a sense of control over one’s own body, and reduces stress and anxiety. By setting and achieving fitness goals, improving physical strength, and participating in social activities such as group exercise, self-image is strengthened and one gets a sense of mastery that create energy and strength to mastring other areas in life.

I feel when I cycle, that my body increases the production of endorphins, I become happier, my stress level goes down, my anxiety decreases, my self-esteem and self-confidence increase. Many of these things are related to the fact that being successful at cycling gives me an increased sense of achievement and mastery. It's not cycling itself that does it, but generally speaking, being successful with all kinds of training, brings mastering feeling. Remember that success is something you define, it's the goals you set for yourself.

Which brings up another important topic, mastery. Mastery is an important feeling. In my professional career I have learned that we are very good at setting high goals, but not so good at achieving them.
So I started setting lower goals for my team instead, so we actually started reaching our goals, It increased the team's motivation and joy. We became more productive, we worked better, we became stronger, we succeeded. Success breeds success. Failure breeds failure.

I have taken that with me into my rehabilitation process. I set simpler and more realistic goals, so that I achieve my goals. And when I succeed, I cheer and celebrate myself, which gives me a good sense of mastery, I grew and became stronger, which again motivated me to keep going forward. Success breeds success.

Understand.

There’s no doubt that physical activity can have a positive impact on our mental health. But how can you get started? The most important thing is to find an activity that you enjoy, so that you’re motivated to keep going. It can be anything from a daily walk to a more intense workout. Start small and gradually increase the intensity.

But when you want to start exercising again, it's important that you know and understand your body and mind, know if you have any limitations after your injury, what options you have, and how you can use that information to find the best type and level of activity for you.

Through the learning process, I began to understand my limitations, and how I could adjust what I wanted to do, so that the limitations taught me other ways to do what I wanted to do. By understanding my own body and mind, limitations became opportunities that opened new doors.

Change. Get started and make it a habit

It's important to make physical activity part of your daily routine. Remember, consistency is key. If you make it a daily routine, it's easier to stick to it, and pretty quickly you're no longer thinking about doing it, you just do it. Yes, I still have days where I struggle to get started. These days, I lower my daily goal so that my goal for the day can just be to go to the mailbox to check the mail (I have a 1.5 km round trip to the mailbox😇). But on a tough day, I can celebrate that I actually manage to walk the 1.5 km, and keep my spirits up, I completed my goal for the day. I'll take that wins.

So the next time you’re considering exercising, remember that you’re not just investing in your physical health, but also in your mental well-being. Your mind and body are closely connected, and the good news is that you can take positive steps towards improving both by being physically active.

A few simple and good tips to help you get starte

• Find out where your motivation comes from. Remember, don't do it because someone else says you should, you have to do it yourself, it all starts in your mind. If it's self-chosen, it's easier to stay motivated over time, and don't compare yourself to others, at least not at first. This doesn't mean it's wrong to start doing something because others say so. Sometimes we need a push to get started, but in the long run it will pay off if it comes from yourself.
• Ask yourself why you want to do this. Is it to get a reward or acceptance, or to avoid shame and guilt? Or is it because it gives you joy, mastery, and self-acceptance. The latter has been shown to lead to more long-term motivation and better self-confidence in what you do.
• If it is to be experienced as fun, it is easier to see the value in what you are doing, rather than if you tell yourself that you have to, should or should. Start with an activity or form of exercise that you find fun and brings joy, then the motives for doing it will also be easier to follow.
• Be realistic about yourself and your own abilities. Don't expect too much at the beginning and don't set too high goals. Start slowly and carefully. If you get injured or tired, it's easier to lose motivation and the desire to continue.
• Make a commitment to someone. I have learned that when say it out loud, It turns out it's easier to stick to my exercise routine. And if you have the opportunity to exercise together with others it can be easier, plus it's social.
• Vary your training. Remember to try different activities and exercises so that you don't get bored. Learn new things and do something you find fun. There are many ways to vary your training so that you face different challenges and experience mastery on new platforms. In addition, it is positive for the body that the different muscle groups are stimulated through different activities and forms of training. And mastery of trying new things builds your self-confidence. Don't be afraid to fail, failing is mastery, because you actually dare to try new things.

Once these points are mapped out and you have had a conversation with yourself about why, it will be much easier if you make exercise a habit, and not something you have to force yourself to do. I have learned that it gives more positive feelings related to motivation when it is a habit and not something you have to force yourself to do, and thus is more stable over time.

Adapt. I like it the way it was.

Adapt is often the biggest obstacle to overcome, and in my opinion the most important part. It is easy and fun to start learning and understanding. Change is a far more demanding process, and adaptation and change are closely linked.

When we start to change ourselves, create new habits, we have to adapt ourselves and our lives to these new habits and new patterns in our daily lives. Humans are resistant to change and would rather resist change and adapt to new things, "I like it how it was, its works for me" ever hear that or even use it? I have...

Changes and adaptations often generate many emotions in most people, both positive and negative, so no, nothing abnormal there, been there and done that too.

For me, getting back to an active life has been a combination of many mixed emotions, ups and downs, blood, sweat and tears, so I won't hide these facts, and there have been and still are times when I have struggled to get going, where the couch feels more like where I want to be. That's when I dig deep and find the things I learned at Sunnaas Hospital and have taken with me from the camps I've been to with the Sunnaas Foundation, to find my motivation, and most of the time I get up and out to be active. But yes, some days the couch wins, and that's okay, it's okay to have bad days, it's okay to be tired, these days will be there, as long as I know it's not the rule but the exception. There are not only good days, but it's important that there are more good days in bad days, so don't let the bad days define you, there are no easy fix, it is hard work, and you are the only one that can do it, it's all starts in your mind, but believe me it's worth it.

When I started my rehabilitation at Sunnaas Hospital in November 2024, I was sort of on my way to an active life, but at the same time I was also in a dark place. Everything in my life was in motion, nothing felt stable. I was unsure of who I was, unsure of how life would turn out, who I was supposed to be. So from the summer of 2024 until I came to Sunnaas, the only thing that kept me from falling completely apart was cycling, being active was what kept my mental health on track. At Sunnaas I started to gain knowledge about life with a brain injury, to see some light in the darkness, slowly but surely moving towards the light, understanding how important it is to be active for a good rehabilitation process. The morning walk we always started the day with while I was at Sunnaas is good proof of the importance of getting out and being active, it gave a good start to the day, gave me energy before the day's program started.

Through my stay at Sunnaas, I came into contact with a remarkably amazing person, an experienced consultant, a mentor. It was an eye-opener to hear his story, that talk, changes everything in a positive way for me🫶. (but that’s another story, I’ll try to tell it later😉), but he also told me about the Sunnaas Foundation and their camps, and introduced me to one of their leaders. That’s when a seed started to take root in my head. When I got home after my stay at Sunnaas, it continued to grow, and after a difficult time thinking carefully about whether I would dare to apply and join, I finally did. I applied to both Camp MTB Adapt and Brain Camp Autumn. These camps confirm how important it is to be active, they provide the opportunity to try new ways of being active in safe conditions🙏🫶❤️. My story about these camps can you find in already published articles here "My Story Till Now" 

Being at these camps with others in similar situations, and people with different disabilities, taught me how important it is to be active in the rehabilitation process. I strongly believe that being active is of great importance for both physical health and especially for mental health.
So a huge thanks to Sunnaas Foundations and all the amazing people who make these camps possible🫶❤️. 

Final thoughts

I have learned a lot from healthcare professionals and other professionals, a lot from being with others in similar situations, some through my own research. I understand myself, my limitations and most of all, my possibilities and abilities.

Today I am well on my way to adapting and changing my habits in a good way. Yes, some days are harder than others, but then I use the "don't miss twice" rule. To miss once is human, but to get back on track tomorrow, to miss twice is the start of a new habit...

It would have been incredibly nice to be able to say that it's all downhill with the wind at your back from here, but no, it's a mountain hike, both up and down these mountains, but I'm over the top. Has it been hard?..., yes, is it worth it?..., without a doubt yes, every single bead of sweat, drop of blood and tear, it's all worth it. There are no shortcuts, it's up to you, a lot of it is in your mind, often it's the thoughts that stop us, and this is the hardest part of training.

My key advice

My key advice for getting back to an active life after an accident or illness is to reduce the exceptions for yourself, accept that you will probably have to start low and gradually build up. Set manageable and achievable goals. Reach your goals, build mastery, mastery builds confidence, confidence builds motivation.

And it makes it a hell lot easier if there are a sense of fun and joy in the exercise you choose😁.

If you're not sure what kind of activity is right for you, dare to try different things. It's important to keep motivated that you find the kind of activity that brings you joy. Joy is the key to staying active.

And reward you self even for small victories, don't be afraid for screaming it out loud, be proud of you self.

And seek professional help if you are unsure of your own abilities, or what is possible for you.

If you need someone to be active with, or just some advice or a motivational talk, feel free to contact me. Maybe I can be of help. I belive in you❤️ ps: you can contact me here

Here is my YouTube channel where you can see my activities, both from before the accident and after. Maybe these could be an inspiration to try cycling out in nature😁, or just to be active🫶.

Subscribe to My YouTube channel😊