The thing about exercise, is that you need to do it to improve your IBS symptoms, but when you’re in the middle of a flare-up, exercising is near impossible. The other thing is that in order to travel, you need to be able to exercise, as you’re probably going to be doing a lot of walking.
The worst flare-up I’ve ever had started in May 2023 and ended in May 2024, so I spent a long time doing no exercise and instead simply moving from my bed to the sofa and back to my bed again each day. And then, at the end of May 2024, I decided to spend three months travelling around Europe. So here’s how I built that exercise back up.
I found a website that explained what five yoga poses are best for people with IBS, and I started there. The five poses were Seated Twist, Cat Cow, Child’s Pose, Bridge, and Corpse. I would start by doing one of these poses a day, for thirty seconds, and then in a few days add another, and continue this process until I was doing all five stretches every morning.
I also found a website that explained what pelvic stretches to do to help ease lower abdominal pain. Chelsea (@ibs_dietitian) also has a module explaining the link between pelvic health and IBS in her IBS Relief Program. I focused on seven exercises, which were Knee to Chest, Knee to the Opposite Shoulder, Foot and Knee Up, Knee Over to Hand, Flat Frog, Happy Baby, and Relaxed Frog. My process with the pelvic stretches mirrored my process with the yoga stretches, I added one every few days until I was doing five yoga poses and seven pelvic stretches each morning.
I saw online that Qi Gong is recommended for people with IBS. I’d never heard of it before, but I looked it up and found a brilliant ten minute video on YouTube by Jeffrey Chand. I watched this video every morning after completing my yoga poses and pelvic stretches, until I memorised the routine. The exercises in this particular routine include an Opening Exercise, Swinging Arms, Chest Opening Exercise, Dan Yu, and Compressing the Qi.
After I started feeling confident regarding my yoga, pelvic stretches, and Qi Gong each morning, I decided to incorporate pilates into my routine. I follow Cami (@camisophiaaaa) on TikTok, who regularly posts pilates routines for people to do from home, so I began to add one of these to my routine every few days until I was doing five yoga poses, seven pelvic stretches, five Qi Gong exercises, and eight pilates moves each morning. The pilates consisted of Dead Bugs, Straight Leg Lifts, Table Top Taps, Donkey Kicks, Fire Hydrant Kicks, Bicycle Crunches, Crunches, and Rainbow Kicks.
Low-intensity workouts are better for those of us living with IBS, so I started walking. I know that will sound terrifying or impossible to some of you, because it felt terrifying and impossible to me. In fact, it almost was impossible. I started walking a few months after I’d began feeling comfortable enough to at least leave the house, but I didn’t walk far at all at first. I started by walking out the front door of my house, around the street, and through the back door of my house. It maybe took two minutes, but I did it every day. Then I would walk around the block, which maybe took five minutes. Then I downloaded an app called MapMyWalk which enabled me to track the distance and time of my walks.
There’s a park in the next village, and you can walk there through some fields. My aim was to walk to this park and back. I think it would have been three kilometres in total. I started by walking to the field, a few days later I would walk to the first gate in the field, and then I would walk to the second gate, and then to the third gate, and then to the end of the field, and then all the way to the park. I didn’t end up doing the complete walk, but that’s because it was March in Northern England and fields get so muddy you can’t walk in them without sinking.
There’s a waterfall in my village, it’s slightly uphill from where I am. So I moved my goalpost to this spot. I’d already hit my two kilometre goal, so I started with that, knowing it would be slightly more difficult with it being an uphill walk. This took me to where the waterfall began. There’s a gate at the other side of the field next to the waterfall, so this was my next goal. Behind that gate is another field, so walking across that came next. From the edge of that field, you can walk over a bridge and it will bring you back to the houses before the waterfall, so that was my next route. I was hitting two and a half kilometres at this point. Next, there’s a path across from the houses which brings you to another road leading to my house. Half-way down that road is a street which goes past the local primary school, around another block of houses and back to my house. This is how far I got before I left for Europe. I was walking just over three kilometres a day.
On my first day travelling around Europe, I walked 13,735 steps. Over the month, I walked an average of 18,226 steps a day. The most I’ve walked so far is 32,925 steps. I would not have believed you if you told me this six months ago. You can do it, too.