When Progress Stalls, Try Something Different

If you follow my blog posts, you already read about my calf injury from playing in an alumni basketball game.

It’s been about a month and after 3 weeks of PT, I’ve made progress by diligently doing my daily exercises, but am still not walking well. When my physical therapist asked if I’d ever heard of dry needling, I flashed back to being a kid with stubborn strep throat, facing a shot that sounded so scary I thought running away from home might be a reasonable option. 💉 🏃‍♂️ 😨

She said that the procedure could help accelerate my calf muscle recovery by inserting a small needle in each side of my leg and running an electric current to increase blood flow and reduce tightness. The outcome sounded great, but the process, not so much.

I decided to go through with dry needling, and two days later I’m already walking better. I’m not fully healed, but it feels like the progress I’d been missing.

That experience reinforced something I keep relearning: effort matters, but so does approach. When growth stalls, the answer isn’t always more grit - it’s often a new method, a new perspective, or a little courage to step outside what’s familiar.

Where might trying a completely different approach, one you’ve never tried before, be the needle-moving jolt that helps you move forward?

Learn In The Flow

Jason Grom