When your body will not cooperate

I dealt with back pain for more than 20 years.

It started to return to high school warming for a football game, everything felt ok … and then * Snap *, they took my back. I had no idea what happened. All I knew was: It hurts, I barely moved and I was scared.

That moment started a lifetime journey of learning about fitness, mobility, injuries prevention – and also learning how come in When you realize it’s not all in your control.

I learned how to train better. I ate a nutritious diet. I am a priority to sleep priority and regularly maintained with corrective exercises prescribed by my doctors and physical therapists. But even though I did “all right” – every 6-24 months, I would hit myself with serious back. Sometimes it would take a few days. Sometimes I would fight him for years.

The last was the worst.

I spent months twisted in a literal C-shape. I couldn’t get up straight. I couldn’t move like I wanted. And more than physical pain, that was mental spiral That got me.

“Shall I get stuck like this?”

“How long will it take this time?”

“Who even if I can’t move or teach or train like I used to be once?”

He was as quickened with my identity in the way I was not fully aware at the beginning.

I’m a coach. Coach. The guy who teaches others how to move well. I’m Dad who fights on the floor with his children. Who cares about physical work around our house.

Now I worked out of bed and examining whether I will ever feel “normal” again.

I eventually dropped the pain in the end (not everyone works). And taught me worthy lessons.

What I learned:

✅ Play the hand you sent.

It turns out to have a congenital spine of stenosis (narrowing spinal channel). I didn’t cause it. I can’t “fix”. But I can build a plan about it. Physical therapy and strength training are much similar! It is the simplest form, it is all version of “exposure therapy”. Emphasize your body enough, and on the right paths to get the answer you want. Not too much, not too little.

Over time, I learned movements that are more likely to cause straight faces. And I can organize my training to build a larger “buffer” of strength and mobility in that area.

It’s not what I’d choose for myself. But that is the best way I know how to answer.

✅ Recovery is mentally as physical.

Don’t give in the mental and emotional toll that the injury takes you or a loved one. You can do all the “right things” and still feel like you are not making progress if your brain is flooded with pain, fear, frustration or embarrassment. Maybe you don’t even recognize the impact that has on you! I am often feel It’s like I’ve dealt with great. But my loved ones could see a tribute to mental stress (let alone physically pain) took me.

I learned this phrase of my mentor, and it’s still resonate with me to date. “Start where you are. Do what you can. Use what you have.” It’s easier to say than done, but falling this way of thinking helped me in some of my darkest moments.

✅ The movement is still worth a fight.

Even when it takes several months. Even when it’s slower than I’d like. Even if the exercise doesn’t look the same as before. It’s still worth working.

Mental and physical advantages of movement in any The form that can do it are too powerful to ignore.

✅ The same solution does not work every time.

This was one of the most difficult to learn. There was no “one size fits everything” solution of my pain.

• Sometimes heat helped. Sometimes it’s not.
• Sometimes the exercise would feel great. Sometimes it would feel awful.
• Sometimes anti-inflammatory oral steriilla helped. Sometimes they are not.

It made me learn to approach each new flat platform as an experiment. To take every day as a small test of what I could do. And it is the same approach we learned to take with our own clients – even those who do not deal with an injury or chronic condition. What it was for them in the past could give us clues, but may not be the best stream a solution for what they need.

More than anything, this made me a better coach.

Now I understand-indeed understand how people with chronic pain or injuries feel.

Fear, doubt, sadness of losing part of what makes you you.

This perspective made me even more empathic, more flexible and more useful and is more and more that I tried to convey our entire coaching staff here on Nerd fitness.

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If you are dealing with pain, shortcomings or feel your body has been issued lately, I see you.

It may take longer than you want.

May look different than it is once.

But you can still build strength, confidence and momentum.

And if you ever need help to do this how to do it in a way that suits your body, your history and your reality? I would love to help.

Just shoot me a message.

– coach Matt