23 Hour Rule

Make use of your 23 hours or else... A Twilight Character will get you.

I consistently find myself writing these during the times I should be studying but I guess some type of productivity is better than none. I was talking with a peer about one of his clients and how it can be frustrating to constantly have to correct the same issues because they seem to regress between the end of the last session to the start of the next. It got me thinking about the 23 Hour Rule. The 23 Hour Rule states that you are working with someone in a specific discipline you probably see them for 1 hour out of 24. You have one hour to try and correct or alter what they do in the other 23 that is causing the issue. I will use fitness as an example because it is relevant to what I do. If your client has shoulder issues and  spends the majority of their day in excessive internal rotation you have only 1 hour to try and promote the correct posture and retraction (pulling back) of the shoulder blades. If this client spends the next 23 hours in that poor position and does not try and make an effort to alter actions in their everyday life (alter desk height, do some mobility work during a commercial, etc.) chances are when they come see you again in a day the issue will not have improved. You are bailing the boat without patching the hole, if you move your arms really fast you may get all the water out but only for a short time before it floods back in. My challenge here is to utilize the other 23 hours, don't just address the issue in that isolated time block. It doesn't matter if your goal is to overhead squat better or learn Spanish.

Personally, when I need to grab something off the bottom shelf in the kitchen I drop into a deep squat and work from there to practice the movement pattern. If I go up an escalator I will  put my one leg up two steps and give the hamstrings a little loving. I try not to sit for an extended period of time without getting up for a stroll and stretch out. Is this enough to make a big noticeable difference? Probably not but it doesn't hurt and is certainly better than doing nothing.