The pain teacher

THE PAIN TEACHER.

What do you do when you get injured?

Better question, what do you do when you have things bothering you in your body that feel annoying enough to make you question if you should do something?

To note... things do require getting checked out. Things can be serious.

This isn't for those things.

Here is the nuance in it all...how do we know if we are injured or not, if we can push through it or not?

Often, this comes down to the individual's mindset.

If you believe you are injured, you could very well create more stress in the body and FEEL injured, when you actually are in a position to be able to move still.

Yet, we could also push through something that does require medical attention.

So... what gives?

Back to the mindset piece.

I believe we all have a deep inner knowing. Yet, some humans have higher tolerances for pain than others. Through how we were raised and what we did throughout our lives, some humans aren't familiar with pushing really hard physically.

If you find yourself in that camp, it would be difficult to check in with your deep inner knowing and truly know if what you are dealing with is something you can continue to move through or not.

This is the importance of having a coach/student relationship.

A coach can help in this instance every single time.

Now let's shift to the pain teacher thought.

What if pain, injury... is nothing but a teacher teaching us a lesson? Something we could take a deep look at. Why did this happen, what created it? What in my life is allowing this injury to take place? How is my diet, my sleep, my movement patterns? How is my stress?

Where can I look to find ways to listen to why the pain has showed up?

Outside of actual accidents and things that do go wrong, much of our pain can tell us something.

We wrote about "ego in the gym" in a previous post, go check that out if you haven't.

Ego can lead us to pain quickly.

Not being mindful of our technique, how we are moving, the loads we choose, the intensity in which we move them, etc... can all bring about injury.

Take the gym out of the picture. This idea applies across the board.

Here is the biggest piece of advice to this blog.

Much of the time, an injury doesn't mean we quit.

An injury can be worked around. We can still do things.

I have witnessed people train in a wheelchair. I have seen people train unable to move their upper body.

It comes down to what you really want.

Is the injury giving you an excuse or is it teaching you something and are you willing to keep going?

An individual's mindset.

At our gym, and any good gym with good coaches... you will find that there are ways to work around it. There are ways to help it.

It comes down to what you want.

So... what do YOU really want?

See ya out there,

Coach D.