Exercise program
When beginning this exercise program, you should stop any other exercises that you may have been shown by a health professional. You should also temporarily stop any workout or sports activities. If you want to continue with exercises other than those described in this book, you should wait
until your pains have completely subsided. If you are intent on returning to sports before your pain has subsided, you must nonetheless avoid all contact sports. As for non-contact sports, you can gently attempt a return to them; if, after a short trial, your pain is worse, you must discontinue even non-contact sports until your pains have completely subsided.
Once you have started this exercise program, new pains may develop, because you are performing movements your body is not used to. The new pains are different from your original pain and are usually felt in areas of the neck and shoulder girdle that were not previously affected. But, provided you continue with the exercises, these pains will wear off in three to four days.
I always suspect that if my patients have not complained of new pains, they have not been exercising adequately or they have not been putting enough effort into correcting their posture. Both new exercises and new postures are likely to cause temporary new pains.
/ cannot overstress the importance of doing the exercises precisely as they are described in this book. That is, it is important to do each exercise exactly as it is described and to do the exercises in the order that is set out in this book. The failure to heed even one sentence in the description of an exercise can keep the exercise from being effective. Don’t figure that you can save time by glancing at the instructions for a particular exercise or by trying to learn an exercise just by looking at the photographs that accompany it. In this way you may save a
minute or two, but may slow your recovery by weeks
