We’ve all had “friends” we really didn’t like.
They always seemed to show up and ruin our good time. We’d roll our eyes and wish they would go away, but felt too guilty to say anything.
Funny thing is, we all hate to admit this, but we might even have been that friend and never knew it.
As we travel through our 2nd 50 years, many of us pick up another friend we wish would just go away.
Chronic pain.
When this friend comes around, it’s never invited. We’re always looking to get rid of it, and the great news is........we can.
If it refuses to totally go away, at least we can keep it quiet standing in the corner.
Some of us, including me, have had this friend decades before our 50th birthday. For over 30 years I’ve jokingly told people, “Pain is my friend.”
It was the truth, but I never really thought it was funny.
When I was in high school I broke a bone in my back. I needed physical therapy for a long time to avoid surgery. The PT was a success, but the broken bone heeled out of alignment.
This caused the disc at that spine segment to grind down at a rapid rate. At my last x-ray, which was years ago, that disc was as thin as a credit card.
This causes me serious chronic back pain - if I don’t exercise.
Logic would say that heavy weight lifting would be damaging to that area of my spine. But when I work out intensely over a period of time, my back pain goes away.
When I start to slack off, it comes back.
Believe it or not, this is a very common theme for most of us. If we have a painful area in our body, we tend to think that not moving it is the best course of action. But as we all experience, giving up exercising that area doesn’t make the pain go away.
If rest cured chronic pain, then chronic pain wouldn’t exist.
Contrary to common logic, regular exercise of a chronic painful area is the best thing we can do to get rid of it.
Significant pain reduction will happen for most people if three things are met:
1- We’re exercising correctly with the appropriate resistance.
2- We’re allowing proper recovery time for adaptation.
3-We stick with it long enough, because sometimes it takes a while.
The pain can get a little worse before it gets better. That’s OK too. Mental toughness gets us to work through chronic pain to get positive results.
I’ve seen people with bad arthritis, old sports injuries, and mystery pain have it all go away with a prolonged, intelligent strengthening program. And if the pain doesn’t completely go away, it lessens quite a bit.
In the rare case there’s no pain reduction, we still benefit from having a strong painful joint, instead of a weak and painful one.
What I almost never see happening is the pain getting worse over a longer period of time if #1, #2, and #3 listed above are met. As a practicing physical therapist for over 26 years, this has been very eye opening for me.
This experience has thought me the Golden Rule for chronic pain:
STRENGTHEN IT.
It will most likely get a lot better.
Chronic pain is obviously different than a new sharp pain. Chronic pain is defined as a pain lasting more than 3-6 months. But I think that any pain lasting over 1 week should be intelligently strengthened.
New, sharp pain is your body telling you something is wrong. Stop exercising and look into it.
Life’s too short to share with unwanted “friends.”
Let’s look chronic pain in the face and tell it to get out of here.
No guilt necessary.
Get strong as hell,
Coach Ken