A powerful perspective that helps you think about opportunities and new solutions for managing symptoms, regaining “performance”, and feeling better. (written 06/16/2024)

A little over a year ago was the first time I helped someone to manage Long COVID symptoms, and I didn’t even realize it at the time. This happened in my Monday morning exercise classes, where I sprinkle brain-based training approaches into general fitness work. I include those brain training elements for a variety of reasons. 

First of all, any physical performance is a result of general fitness. I was an Olympic athlete in the sport of Biathlon, and my goal in every race I started was to win a medal or stand on the podium.  Even when my main task was skiing fast and hitting targets, I would not come close to reaching my goal if my only focus was just putting time in on skis and shooting at targets. Success, including success on the biggest stages, came from little actions that supported my body to function well and perform at its best. 

What does this have to do with Long COVID? When Katie came to my class, her goal was to regain fitness, now that she had worked out ways to build her body’s resilience again and tolerate more physical exertion without “crashing” or going into PEM. In class, people attending were able to tolerate more physical activity when I included brain-specific training elements. At ThriveNinety, we call this a “safe novelty” and have built it into how we support people we work with. It doesn’t necessarily take much time to activate and align the nervous system. What does help is doing it in small, regular doses. 

When competing at the highest level, where everyone is doing their training, the little things that accumulate can increase your overall ability and let you achieve your goal. The things that you do consistently have an impact on your body and how you feel. The good and bad news is that this works in both directions - so you can consistently do things that support your body or things that consistently make it harder for your body to perform well. When an athlete doesn’t do things that take care of their body on a regular basis, they find their performance is not as strong as it could be. 

You may not naturally draw parallels between managing Long COVID symptoms day to day with training for the Olympics. Athletes consciously decide to dedicate themselves to high-end physical performance and meeting sporting goals, while people with Long COVID did not choose to be impacted and are left needing to work out how to manage daily tasks that they took for granted before. There are still similarities. Both paths take commitment and consistency in applying the right approaches, but both can be simple. In both cases, people are more successful when they approach the task looking at their body as a complex system and build on a solid foundation. Both require simple actions to be part of a routine and way of life. Just like an athlete is an athlete 24/7 and everything the athlete does affects their performance, someone experiencing Long COVID lives with it 24/7, and everything they do affects their performance. 

For this week, I wrote a blog post, Professional Sports and Long COVID Symptom Management, about the similarities and offered a different perspective about tools and approaches people with Long COVID can draw from to help them feel better. I hope this perspective is useful, and may even help you think about opportunities and new solutions for managing symptoms, regaining “performance”, and feeling better. 

Warmly,  
Andrea

PS. Athletes need to balance activity and rest; so do people who have Long COVID. Athletes follow a routine; so do people with Long COVID. Athletes have to commit to their health on a high level; so do people with Long COVID. This week's blog post Professional Sports and Long COVID Symptom Management is about this correlation that often opens possibilities by seeing something from a different perspective to find answers and solutions.