I care deeply about pain. I think, read, listen, feel, and consume everything I can about it because it has such an impact on all of our lives! Pain is not optional but is rather a normal part of the human experience. While pain is normal, chronic pain is not. It’s not meant to stick around and pain has become an epidemic that creates great suffering. It needs to be solved. I’m constantly making connections and synthesizing ideas about pain when I watch movies, listen to music, consume social media, read the news, analyze research, and talk with friends and family. As Jack Harlow said in his song “What’s Poppin”…Some people call it a scary obsession, I like to call it a passion. If you don’t follow me on Instagram, I hope you will HERE. A lot of my content connects to what I write about on Substack, enhancing and reinforcing important ideas that serve to benefit you and yours. Plus now and then I do something unexpected ;)
I also care a lot about athletes. While I treat “all comers” in my clinical practice, I have a soft spot for athletes because I am one. I’ve been an athlete my whole life. While I’m proud of my achievements over time, my definition of “athlete” is pretty loose at this point. Mostly because active people get intimidated by the word imagining elites like tennis phenom Serena Williams, basketballer Kobe Bryant, skier Mikaela Shiffrin, footballer Lionel Messi, collegiate basketballer Caitlin Clark, and cyclist Mattieu van der Poel as the standard. My definition includes anyone who’s motivated to engage with the world physically in any meaningful and challenging way. No elite goals are necessary. In other words, if you are a human being, you are an “ATHLETE”.
I’ve seen, personally and professionally, how acute pain can turn into chronic pain and destroy lives, and even families. While chronic pain is defined as pain lasting longer than 3 months, all pain starts somewhere. And that somewhere is in the acute phase; in the first days and weeks of a person’s pain experience. Athletes incorrectly assume that when they have acute pain, they’re injured. This creates fear and thus primes the nervous system for more pain. So, I created a course that combines my 2 passions (pain and athletes). Mostly because athletes are not getting valid or reliable information about why they hurt. But also because I know the frustration and disappointment of being held back by pain. My new course is called “Unlearning Pain For Athletes”, and I put a shit ton of work into it so we can all keep playing. Check out the link HERE to learn more. The next cohort will start May 10th, 2024 and, if you’re limited by pain, I hope you’ll join. This is a fully immersive and interactive course that leaves you with a superpower leading to more confidence in your body, improved mental health, better performance in sport and life, and a new perspective on the meaning and growth value of pain. You’ll be an expert in pain and in knowing yourself, as a person and as an athlete.
In the meantime, I want to share a big idea from the course that I thought you might find interesting:
Acute pain does not mean injury.
I’ll say it again another way. Just because your pain just started, that doesn’t mean you damaged or hurt your body. In fact, in 2023, 9 out of 10 new clients, in my busy clinical practice in the most active town in the world (Boulder, CO), had pain that just started but did not on exam demonstrate signs of physical injury. Those clients had no explanation for why their bodies got injured. There was no clear mechanism of injury or obvious moment where the body got hurt. It just came seemingly out of nowhere. People try to make up stories to make physical or biomechanical meaning, but mostly those fall short. So what’s going on here? Below I’ll tell you my favorite case example that I share when I train clinicians and treat clients dealing with acute pain that’s not due to injury. This one idea will forever change the way you react to physical symptoms.
The rest of this post is for paid members. Please become a paid subscriber to support my writing and stay tuned for my next post on visualization and mental rehearsal to overcome symptoms and perform your best.
