You’ve probably heard the same sound-byte perspectives from practitioners, doctors, friends, family, and internet “experts” surrounding why your body feels the way it feels.
Including but not limited to things like:
you need to have better posture
you have a “tight” ______ (insert muscle name) you need to stretch or release
your pain is because of arthritis, bulging discs, stenosis, or some other abnormality
you don’t have enough range of motion in some movement or another
you aren’t activating your glutes, or some other muscle group
you need to reduce inflammation with ice, anti-inflammatory medications, etc.
you have scar tissue
your IT bands are tight
you need to use some kind of “support” for your arches, your back, your neck, etc.
The purpose of this page is for you to start questioning some of those things you have been told. Not necessarily because they are incorrect (I know nothing about your situation, therefore cannot make claims like that specific to you), but because they are buzzword sound-bytes so often repeated that people stop thinking about whether they make any sense. While not necessarily incorrect, they are not necessarily correct either; however, when someone with some letters after their name throws big words at you, it’s hard not to take their word for it, right?
Is posture that important? Are the problems you experience because of “tight” stuff, or “weak” stuff, and if you just “correct” your posture by “stretching” the tight stuff and strengthening the “weak” stuff, everything will get better? Because someone looked at you with their almighty x-ray vision and saw through your clothing and skin straight through to your problem? Also, this crazy guy is one of my mentors, and I have been to all of his classes several times for years now. Half the equipment in my gym is from him.
Maybe someone has told you that your Range of Motion (ROM) is limited in some exercise or movement. Compared to whom? According to what world-wide law that says you must have a certain amount of motion on, say, a squat? These two videos help illustrate the following: if anyone has ever told you that you MUST be able to achieve a certain, arbitrarily chosen position, they are grossly over-simplifying human bodies, physics, and probably don’t understand the complex combination of things that contribute to a movement like a squat. Not that it’s their fault - they probably just don’t know better.
These videos illustrate some of the complexities behind squat mechanics, but the principles Tom uses of thinking critically, understanding the differences between people and their dimensions, etc., are the real value to glean.
Abnormalities do not cause pain
You’re not alone if under the impression that some, or all, of your pain is because of some kind of internal abnormality. It’s entirely normal and understandable for the following to happen:
1. You go to a doctor and say “Doc, ____ hurts.”
2. Doc takes picture (x-ray, MRI, etc.) of cranky area
3. Doc sees some sort of abnormality that doesn’t line up with what things are “supposed” to look like in a textbook.
4. We jump to the conclusion that said abnormality is what causes the pain.
However, in the more recent past, lots of studies have been run on folks with ZERO pain, complaints, issues, or symptoms of any kind, where they take images of their joints. What do they find? That a startlingly high percentage of these people with ZERO symptoms have the same abnormalities you may have been told were causing your pain! You can check this photo to the right and maybe see how many people have the same thing you were told causes your pain, but have no symptoms themselves.
So, if all these people (87% with cervical bulging discs for example, or 68% with hip labrum injuries) have these internal abnormalities, but have ZERO symptoms, how can we say that your abnormalities are the cause of your pain? Those types of things are certainly a part of the pain equation - it is (probably) safe to say that you’re more likely to have pain with these abnormalities than without them.
But, if all these folks have these things going on inside them, and have no pain, it is impossible to say that these types of things are the cause of your pain.
we are all built differently, and no way is “better” or “worse” than others
These photos are some of my favorites. They show the potential differences in bone structure, dimensions, and alignment.
You may ask, “Which one of these is me?”
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which one you are; what matters is an acknowledgement of the potential internal differences of bone structure influencing your mechanics and available motion. When you can or cannot do a certain movement, and someone tells you you MUST be able to perform that movement, that person is immediately discounting the possibility of your literal bones not allowing for that movement. Whether it’s touching your hands behind your back, touching your toes with your legs straight, going ass to grass on a squat, or anything else along those lines, if your bone structure doesn’t allow for it, you will NEVER do it. And that is fine; someone else who knows nothing about your body, who designed the course that professional is using to mandate you perform those movements in a cookie cutter fashion, is discounting the myriad of complexities within you. And attempting to do something your bones don’t allow for is a BAD IDEA.
do you need to reduce inflammation to get out of pain?
This is a very popular sound-byte regurgitated by almost everyone out there. Reduce inflammation with ice, drugs, red light therapy, or many other approaches.
But what if I told you inflammation is required to heal damaged tissue? And if you consistently remove inflammation, you may never actually heal?
Inflammation serves very important purposes.
One of the main reasons something gets inflamed is to swell the area with fluid, allowing blood flow to more easily access the area.
There are three (some split it into four, but we will stick with three) basic stages to the recovery process:
Inflammatory phase - inflammation surrounds the damaged area, swelling it to allow a higher volume of blood and lymph to access the area
Proliferation phase - Blood and lymph clearing out dead and damaged cells and tissues from area, and new healthy tissue is laid down in their place
Remodeling phase - The new tissue is altered to more closely match the surrounding remaining healthy tissue
SO, if you remove inflammation chronically, you will never get to the stages where your body actually heals the tissue, or it will at least take much longer.
Inflammation also is related to pain, which is important because it dissuades you from using the area in any way that could hinder the recovery process.
So if you are consistently taking inflammatory blockers, or using things like ice to remove inflammation, you will feel better; however, you may be elongating the arc of healing and returning to normal.
