When pain is the road block to your fitness resolution

As a chiropractor, I frequently hear from my patients how they hurt because they don't exercise, but when they exercise they hurt even more. Often times they will have already been to a personal trainer and/or a physical therapist and/or another chiropractor. The problem is that many personal trainers don't understand common dysfunctional movement patterns, and many physical therapists (and other chiropractors) will only look at the site of pain, and not consider how a painless dysfunction in one area (usually core muscles) will result in pain in another area.

As an example, let's look at the shoulder. Many patients have told me that they have a rotator cuff syndrome and therefore CAN'T and SHOULDN'T raise their arms over their heads. In reality they will NEVER get better UNLESS they raise their arms overhead (with good form, of course). Teaching them how to use their deltoid and trapezius muscles to perform this motion will spare their rotator cuff muscles. Just training the rotator cuff muscles is not the answer.

Your body is efficient, sometimes too efficient. It will often try to conserve energy by taking shortcuts. For example, watch someone pick up a pencil off the floor. We all know it is best to bend the knees and squat the butt as low as possible. But is this what we do in reality? Usually not. Most people, when unaware of anyone watching, will contort their bodies in all sorts of strange ways to forego using the core muscles and the big muscle: gluteus maximus. Previously I would have considered this a form of laziness. Now I consider it the body's attempt at efficiency. Using the gluteus maximus and core muscles takes more energy. But if the body continues to avoid using the big/core muscles, it will eventually shut them down and only use the smaller ones. This reminds me of a saying in my family - in order to find the most efficient way to do something, get the laziest person to do it. The only problem is they always complain about it. Your smaller muscles and joints will also complain. Unfortunately, not everybody understands the language.

Any shortcuts that your body takes will eventually result in painful road blocks. Road blocks such as pain in the neck, the low back, the hip, the shoulder, the knee, the foot, and the elbow. Many have been previously diagnosed as spinal disc bulges, sciatica, radiculitis, patellofemoral tracking disorder, plantar fasciitis, IT band syndrome, rotator cuff syndrome, or tennis elbow to name a few. But these are only names. Just naming something does not answer the question "why?". And why is it that most patients with tennis elbow don't play tennis? These shortcuts are the "why?". We can show you how to get to your fitness destination by taking the main roads and using the big muscles/ core muscles. So if someone has told you that you CAN'T or SHOULDN'T squat, lift, run, walk, bicycle, swim, or do any exercise that you want to do, get a second opinion before you give up on exercise.