👁️ Awareness Versus Fear
Sometimes, feeling pain or "tightness" is a good reminder your body is working.
Pain is a complicated subject.
Pinpointing the root cause of pain is like finding an acupuncture needle in a haystack.
You’re likely never going to understand the exact mechanisms that make your back twinge after bending over to pick up a fork off the floor.
Or the reason that you can deadlift 200+ pounds of weight with no pain at all.
That doesn’t mean we should get pessimistic about trying to live with pain.
Newsletter Summary:
Understanding the difference between letting pain cripple you and letting it takes its course
What you can do today to deal with physical pain better
One quote about pain to end the week (or start it, depending on what Sunday is for you)
👁️ Awareness Versus Fear
I’ve worked with people who’ve had scoliosis, sciatica, broken bones, sprains, lacerations, operations, metalized joints, and autoimmune disorders.
The one thing I can say about all those people is that they each had a unique relationship with pain.
Pain is not something that we can figure out in a day, a year, or even many years, despite what some physical therapists might tell you. “Injury prevention” is a fool’s errand in my book, because injuries are spontaneous, unpredictable, and unfortunately part of life.
Instead of getting down in the dumps about this fact, we can focus on reframing our perception of pain.
“Sunshine always follows the rain.”
Understanding that pain makes us human is the first step to normalizing it and reframing it. Without occasional painful moments, we wouldn’t enjoy our healthiest days nearly as much.
Morbid as that thought might be, it should help us understand that we are not lesser because of the pain we feel; we’re more whole.
Some of the clients I mentioned above have felt resentment toward their bodies of pain.
I try to encourage the opposite — thankfulness.
That is an uphill battle that’s taken a lot of practice — for both myself and them — to internalize. Certainly, the goal of a happy human life is minimizing pain as much as possible. But when pain comes, we should, for a moment, welcome it before deciding it needs to leave our body immediately.
This process allows us to be patient with pain — not letting it dominate our minds and stress us out, but to take a slow-and-steady approach to treating it.
Instead of fearing it and trying at every moment of our lives to prevent it, we should be aware that pain can come and go at any time.
Strategies for Managing Pain
No two pains are alike.
Some last days, some last years.
As I write this, I’m dealing with a terribly annoying shoulder injury.
Instead of macro-dosing ibuprofen and trying to treat it every day, I’m trying to take 5-10 minutes a day to think about the pain itself, and, silly as it sounds imagine it going away soon.
Beyond the mental exercises, moving your body around the pain is another actionable step to remove it.
Where modern medicine has failed us today is that it teaches us pain results in incapacitating rest. Some physios and hospitals suggest resting, relaxing, and not moving at all to let the pain subside. I believe this is an outdated approach.
More and more these days, movement is evolving to heal us.
Many studies tell us that blood flow to and around the muscles is actually good for recovery.
I don’t want to bash other industries too much, though. There are uses for “recovery tools” like massages and massage guns, cold and hot therapy, acupuncture, and yoga.
The placebo effect is especially poignant in physical fitness. If you feel like those interventions will work for you (and feel good after doing them), then they probably are working. So lean into that.
Finally, giving yourself a realistic timeline for healing — just like any other fitness endeavor — is the best way to cope with an injury that might be plaguing you mentally and physically.
This will be humbling.
Many people who I’ve had the privilege of spending time with on fitness have stayed patient enough with me (thank you all, if you’re reading!) to understand that more time is needed to develop resilience and tolerance to pain than one thinks.
One quote about pain to end the week (or start it, depending on what Sunday is for you)
“The pain will leave once it has finished teaching you."
- Bruce Lee
See you later this week.