As a fitness professional pain can easily be the most complex issue you’ll ever dive into. Mount Stupid is often evident, where you learn a little bit and you think you know everything and then you learn more and realize you know nothing.
But one thing that is incredibly clear about pain is that it’s an action signal.
I didn’t originate this idea – Lorimer Moseley one of the godfathers of pain science probably did.
Touch the stove, it hurts almost instantly, pull your hand away. Not fast enough to prevent a burn, but fast enough for you not to lose all the skin on your hand.
As kids we learn pretty quickly that pain is trying to tell us things, and we respond to it.
For some reason, fitness makes people dumb about pain. They think they NEED to experience pain, that it somehow correlates with results.
So they ignore pain, and what it’s trying to tell them.
They push through.
Then the pain gets louder, it moves around, and sometimes you go so far that you break the loop of sensation and action and now the pain is persistent even though it’s not at all obvious if there’s any action to take.
It can get really complicated, and chronic pain is one of the worst things you can have to live with. I don’t want to diminish that or give the impression that I’m saying it’s all so simple.
But I can tell you this from my experience helping people, pain usually means:
– You’re doing something too much.
– You’re not doing something enough.
I know that’s broad and vague, but it’s the single best heuristic to figure out what’s wrong.
If you’re driving down the freeway and everyone is waving at you and flashing their lights maybe they’re trying to tell you that you’re going the wrong way?
Never, ever, ignore pain signals – they’re trying to tell you something.
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