Recover Stronger

Recover Stronger Recover Stronger is your one-stop resource to learn how to overcome injury & pain, get stronger, more flexible and feel empowered in your day to day life.

Hi, I'm Sonia. I am a UK-registered Osteopath + Strength & Flexibility Coach + Educator + Planet Lover on a quest to promote a sustainable life for our bodies and planet alike! I believe in Movement & educating people on how to regain control of their bodies while preaching a no BS approach. Injury doesn’t need to equal to a ban from your favourite activity. It’s an opportunity to learn from your

body, focus on your needs and Recover Stronger. Join me on a new journey of discovery of your new body, DM your concerns and struggles and let's chat!

There is no best exercise for your injury.And I’ll die on this hill.The fitness and rehab internet content is full of co...
08/05/2026

There is no best exercise for your injury.

And I’ll die on this hill.

The fitness and rehab internet content is full of confident lists:
3 exercises for back pain.
The one stretch for your hip.
Stop doing X if you have knee issues.

None of those posts know you.

They don’t know your load tolerance, your movement history, your stage of healing, or what you were doing when the injury happened.

The same exercise that resolves one person’s pain can aggravate another’s.

Not because the exercise is wrong.

Because the person is different.

The most honest thing I can say as a practitioner is:
it depends.

I know that’s not as satisfying as a definitive answer.

But a definitive answer that doesn’t apply to you is worse than useless.

You deserve a plan built around you.
Not built around a fictional average person.

Has this been your experience?
Yes or no below. ↓

I built this because I kept having the same conversation.Someone comes to me after months of being told to rest. Or afte...
08/05/2026

I built this because I kept having the same conversation.

Someone comes to me after months of being told to rest. Or after Googling their injury and finding 47 contradictory opinions. Or after getting a list of exercises with no explanation of why.

And the first thing they say is:
“I just didn’t know where to start.”

So I made something.

The Resilient Mover’s Roadmap is a free guide for active people dealing with injury or pain who want to keep training but have no idea how to approach it safely.

Inside:
👉 How to spot the red flags that actually need urgent attention
👉 How to assess what your body can and can’t do right now
👉 How to modify your training so you keep moving intelligently
👉 How to track progress so you know if things are actually improving

It’s not magic exercises.
It’s a framework.

Because the answer to “I’m injured, what now?” shouldn’t be rest and wait.

Download it free, link in bio. And send it to anyone you know who’s been told to sit it out.

05/05/2026

Not all pain during training means the same thing.

And treating it all the same way is one of the most common reasons people stay stuck.

Some discomfort is part of training.
The burn of a hard set, the ache of muscles working, the sensation of a movement your body isn’t used to yet.

This is your system adapting.
Not a signal to stop.

A sharp or sudden pain is different: it’s your nervous system saying pay attention. Something changed. Something felt like too much.

But sharp doesn’t automatically mean damage.

It might be muscle guarding. Your nervous system on high alert, especially if you have a history of injury or chronic pain.

A load or range your body wasn’t expecting.
A signal to pause and assess: not to catastrophise.

Actual tissue damage looks different.
It usually involves a clear mechanism: a fall, a sudden force, something that gave way.

It comes with significant swelling, bruising, loss of function, or instability. These are the situations that need professional assessment.

The problem is most people skip straight from any sharp or unfamiliar sensation to “I must have done damage.”

That leap keeps people stuck.

Modifying and avoiding long after their body is ready to load again.

Pain is your nervous system communicating.

The question isn’t “does this hurt?”
It’s “what is this actually telling me?”

If you want a clear framework for what to actually do when you’re injured, I made “The Resilient Mover’s Roadmap” for exactly this.

Free, link in bio. Or comment with the area that hurts and I’ll send it your way.. me, human me, not a bot!

You can train through pregnancy.Not despite the evidence; because of it.The research on exercise during uncomplicated pr...
29/04/2026

You can train through pregnancy.

Not despite the evidence; because of it.

The research on exercise during uncomplicated pregnancy is now clear: it’s not just safe, it’s actively beneficial.
👉 Reduced risk of gestational diabetes.
👉 Better management of pelvic and back pain.
👉 Improved mood and sleep.
👉 Evidence pointing toward shorter labour and faster postnatal recovery.

The physiological changes of pregnancy - increased blood volume, cardiovascular adaptation, hormonal shifts - don’t make movement dangerous.

For most women, they make it more important.

What changes is how you train.

Load management matters because recovery shifts.
The pelvic floor is working harder and deserves attention.
Breathing mechanics and intra-abdominal pressure become more relevant as pregnancy progresses.

But the idea that pregnancy is a reason to stop?

That came from caution, not evidence.

And it’s cost a lot of women the strength that would have made pregnancy, birth and recovery significantly easier.

If you’ve been told to rest and take it easy, ask for the reason.
You deserve a specific answer, not a blanket restriction.

Training during pregnancy or recently postpartum?
Drop your question below. 👇

And for research updates follow .christina_prevett who are doing amazing work in this field of research 👏

28/04/2026

You’re not bad at being consistent.

Your plan just wasn’t built for your actual life.

The stop-start cycle that most people experience with training isn’t a willpower problem.

Research on behaviour change is clear on this: consistency comes from fit, not force.

When a training plan doesn’t match your real schedule, your real energy, your real constraints, it doesn’t get done.

That’s rational, not weak.

Most plans are designed for an idealised version of you:

the one with time, energy, support, and a body that responds predictably.

That person is not always available.

So instead of asking “why can’t I be more disciplined?”

the more useful question is: does this actually fit the life I have right now?

Not the life I used to have. Not the life I’m working toward. The one I’m living today.

That’s where I start with every client. And it changes everything.

What’s been getting in the way of your consistency?

Tell me below. 👇

Last week two sessions floored me.This week I went back.First set. 25 reps of tricep extensions. My husband across from ...
27/04/2026

Last week two sessions floored me.
This week I went back.

First set. 25 reps of tricep extensions. My husband across from me doing the same. Baby hadn’t slept. Body was sore. I didn’t want to be there.

And I started crying.

Not dramatically. Just, everything at once.
The fatigue, the overwhelm, the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be. All of it arriving at the same time in the middle of a set I didn’t ask for.

He put on music from when we were teenagers in Italy.
We started being silly. Dancing between sets.
Slowly, something shifted.

We ended up doing a pretty challenging session.
I pushed myself. It felt good.

I didn’t push through the crying. I didn’t ignore what my body was telling me. Something in the environment changed, and my state changed with it.

This is actually one of the most well-evidenced things in behaviour change.

Our internal state is far more influenced by our external environment than we think.

The music wasn’t magic.
It just gave my nervous system something different to respond to.

Sometimes the path through isn’t discipline.
It’s dancing between sets until your body remembers it’s allowed to enjoy this.

Has music or something unexpected ever changed a session for you?

Tell me below 👇

Your spine moves in three directions.Most rehab only trains one of them.Flexion and extension get all the attention: pla...
27/04/2026

Your spine moves in three directions.

Most rehab only trains one of them.

Flexion and extension get all the attention: planks, dead bugs, bird dogs.. and those are good exercises.

But the research on how people with back pain actually move tells an interesting story.

They tend to show significantly greater asymmetry in lateral flexion and rotation compared to people without pain. Not necessarily less total movement.
More uneven movement - one side compensating, the system defaulting to familiar patterns rather than moving freely in all directions.

And improvements in that lateral flexion asymmetry are associated with better treatment outcomes for both pain and physical performance.

There’s something even more interesting about rotation specifically.

People with chronic low back pain often don’t have less rotation overall: they have rotation that comes predominantly from the lumbar spine, with less contribution from the thorax and pelvis.

The movement becomes spine-dominant rather than coordinated across the whole system.

Which means training rotation isn’t just about adding range.
It’s about training who does what, and when.

In practice this changes the questions I ask.

Not just “can you brace and hold?” but:
Can you side bend symmetrically?
Can you rotate with your whole trunk, not just your lower back?
Do you have more than one movement option when things get loaded?

The spine that moves well in all directions is more resilient than the spine that’s just stable in one.

Do you ever train rotation or lateral flexion intentionally?
Curious what people are doing. 👇

25/04/2026

Being told your scan result can make your pain worse.

Not metaphorically.
Physiologically.

In one study, patients whose morphine was openly stopped reported a sudden spike in pain.
Patients whose medication was stopped without informing them reported no change.

Same intervention; the only variable was the words used.

Healthy subjects given a sham electrical device and told a current was passing through their head developed headaches.

No current.
No tissue damage.
The information created the symptom.

Being told negative information about pain, even once, has been shown to alter how the brain processes pain signals for up to 90 days, with measurable changes in brain activity.

In clinical trials, 52% of patients receiving a completely inert placebo reported adverse side effects.
Symptoms from a drug they weren’t taking, because they’d been told those symptoms were possible.

This is called the nocebo effect.

And it’s what happens when a practitioner points to a scan and says “your spine is degenerating” or “there’s significant wear and tear” or “that disc is pressing on the nerve”, without context.

Words create expectations.
Expectations create measurable physiological changes.

Last week I showed you what’s on most people’s scans regardless of pain.

This is why how those findings get communicated matters just as much as what they show.

You deserve information.
Not a sentence.

Has a practitioner ever said something about your body that changed how moved or trained?

Tell me below. 👇

| injury rehab | myth busting

PMID: 21862825
PMID: 21811804
PMID: 28983051

22/04/2026

Following up on the foot post from last week.

If the intrinsic foot muscles are undertrained - and in most people they are - here’s where to start.

Four exercises, no equipment, 8 minutes:

👉 Short foot: spread your toes, then draw the ball of your foot toward your heel without curling the toes. Sounds simple. Feels surprisingly hard if the foot hasn’t been asked to do this in a while.

👉 Toes Isolation: keeping your foot in contact with the floor lift your big toe / other toes in isolation then repeat starting from the top and lowering in isolation. Make sure not to rotate from the ankle. Pure intrinsic foot muscle work.

👉 Toe-off drill: standing on the ball of your foot, extend your free leg, then bring it forward with momentum consciously pushing through the big toe at the end of each step. Most people barely recruit it. It drives propulsion, arch support, and hip extension all at once.

👉 Single leg balance: barefoot or in a minimal sole. Eyes open, then close. Notice what happens at the foot, ankle and hip when there’s no cushioning absorbing the work.

Start small. 8 minutes barefoot a day. Add these in. One minute each.

The foot is a foundation. Like any foundation, the earlier you pay attention to it the better.

Which one felt the hardest?
Drop it below, genuinely curious. 🧐

Should you train differently across your menstrual cycle?Your social media feed probably says yes: push hard in the foll...
19/04/2026

Should you train differently across your menstrual cycle?

Your social media feed probably says yes:
push hard in the follicular phase, pull back in the luteal.

It sounds logical: hormones change, physiology shifts.
Surely training should adapt.

Here’s where it gets more interesting than the trend suggests.

Multiple systematic reviews have now looked at whether periodising training around the cycle produces better outcomes than standard programming.

The current conclusion is that it’s premature to say it does.
Research doesn’t yet support the idea that short-term hormonal fluctuations across the cycle meaningfully influence acute strength performance or longer-term adaptations to training.

‼️That’s not “your cycle doesn’t matter.” It’s that the evidence for completely restructuring your programme around it isn’t there yet.

Part of why: women have been chronically underrepresented in sports science research, and much of the existing work used poor methodology - calendar-based cycle tracking instead of actually measuring hormones. We’re only now getting properly designed studies. The science is genuinely still developing.

What does matter:
👉 how you feel is real data. Perceived effort, recovery, and energy do shift for many women across the cycle even when objective measures don’t.
👉 Symptoms that interfere with training deserve attention, not just workarounds.
👉 And tracking your cycle alongside your training gives you your own patterns; which are more useful than any generic protocol.

The goal isn’t to periodise your training around your cycle.
It’s to understand your body well enough to work with it.

Have you ever tried training around your cycle? What actually changed?
Drop it below — lived experience is part of this picture too.



PMID: 37033884
PMID: 38286940

Two sessions in ten days floored me this week.And I’ve been sitting with why that’s so hard to say.I know the theory. I ...
17/04/2026

Two sessions in ten days floored me this week.

And I’ve been sitting with why that’s so hard to say.

I know the theory. I know the physiology. I know that rest is not weakness and that the body under load needs recovery and that stress is stress whether it comes from a barbell or a sleepless night or a brain that never stops.

I know all of it.

And still there’s a voice that says: “this should be easier.” “You should be doing more.” “Something is always better than nothing.”

Except sometimes nothing is genuinely what’s left.

Not because you don’t want it enough.
Not because you lack discipline.

But because the cup is completely full.
Work. Clients. A baby. No family nearby. A body managing more than anyone can see. A brain that’s been running at maximum capacity for so long that someone asking you to change a small thing feels like the last straw.

That’s not a motivation problem.

That’s a full human being with nothing left to pour.

I’m sharing this because the messages I got yesterday told me some of you are here too.

You’re not failing.
Your life is just genuinely a lot.

Swipe if you need to hear the rest. 👉

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