Are you an athlete who’s struggling with pain or other chronic symptoms? Have you tried everything to treat those symptoms, but you’re still feeling limited? Maybe you’ve been told you can’t do X, Y, or Z anymore by well-meaning clinicians. Or perhaps you’ve just lost your mojo and been forced to slowly reduce your participation in sports despite everyone’s best efforts to fix you. Maybe you hesitate to even call yourself an athlete anymore? While that part of you might have gone dormant, I’m here to tell you that it’s still there waiting to re-emerge. While it evolves and changes, it never goes away. There has never been a more hopeful time in the world of pain and performance. I want to share my optimism with you. Even if you’ve seen me as a client in the past, the course I’ve created is an immersive deep dive into why pain continues to hold you back as an athlete, and in your life.
There was a time when all I wanted to do was race my bike. But there’s only one thing that remains constant in life; CHANGE. As the fun drained out of cyclocross racing after a decade, I was forced to re-evaluate my relationship with cycling, and exercise in general; and, in the process my relationship with myself. With my identity. This process was not without pain. I had physical pain and injury as well as emotional pain and massive upheaval in my life as part of this evolution. It was not fun, but it was an important part of becoming more of who I truly am. The athlete and the person I was meant to be.
As athletes we’re driven toward goals, to do hard things, to achieve, to prove ourselves, to demonstrate that we’re enough, to satisfy that urge to escape and find a state of flow or an exhilarating hit of dopamine. This can be done from a place of honorable intention. But it can also quickly evolve into an encumbered act that results in great suffering. I’ve done some deep soul-searching in the last decade to come to terms with my identity as an athlete and ultimately arrive at a place that feels right for me.
Sadly, for many athletes, this growth comes disguised as pain. Consciously we’re just doing what we do. But subconsciously the mind knows something isn’t right. Most athletes get sucked down a rabbit hole of fixing the body reflexively blaming biomechanics, bike fit, shoes, posture, strength, asymmetry, flexibility, wear & tear, and age. But we know from modern pain science that these factors don’t correlate with pain. Modern pain science shows us that all pain is driven by the brain, all pain is affected by our psychology and social realities, and most pain is not body problem. Yes, even in athletes. Pain is far more existential and invites us to pay attention to deeper meaning.
My experience as a clinician, scientist, and athlete led me to create a course for athletes who are stuck in the “F” mindset. Athletes who are hell-bent on fixing, who are frustrated, focused on, fearing, freaking out, fighting, and feeding the symptoms by only treating the body. Relying on biomedical strategies that treat symptoms rather than cause. Athletes who only get better temporarily, for whom symptoms jump around and consistently interrupt training, or for whom symptoms accumulate thereby slowly eroding their ability to engage in movement and removing joy from the noble act of sport. Or worse giving up sport altogether.
The goal of my new course “Unlearning Pain For Athletes” is to empower you (people who want to be active and the clinicians who support them) with information and strategies to overcome physical symptoms once and for all. Then to make meaning and learn from those symptoms, and from your life experience, to emerge a better athlete who is moving from a place of noble intention, aligned with your values. An athlete who is unencumbered by the past and truly living as a vision of the future they want.
There are only 20 spots available for the first cohort of this course. The first cohort of 10 to register will start on January 7th, 2024. The second cohort will start in early February. Grab your spot today and let’s discover athlete version 2.0 on the other side of pain.
