Are you in pain? Have you tried everything?

If you answered “yes” to the title of this article, you need to keep reading it. If you take the advice given in this article, there is a solid chance that you will see a 10% improvement in your symptoms in less than a month, and that 10% change will give you all the hope that you need to fuel your drive to 100%.

It’s astonishing how many people come to me every day asking for help from with their injuries who say “I have tried everything.” You know that you haven’t tried everything, it’s why you’re still reading, it’s why they’re on the phone with me or in my instagram DM, you and they are hoping that there is something magical that they have missed. 

You would do anything to get rid of the annoying pain that you have had for months, or even years, that doctors and coaches have chalked up to “getting old” or “the way people with arthritis feel” as examples. Let’s spend a few paragraphs talking about the things that coaches on my staff at Active Life do with their clients every single day (over 10,000 clients in the last four years), to help them get out of pain without going to the physio or taking harmful medications, without missing the gym, even if they have been in pain for years and medical professionals told them they “have to live with it.”

If you agree with this statement, then you can be helped;

If there is one other person in the world who is your age, with your condition, and is living the lifestyle you would like to live, without pain, then you too can live a pain free, active lifestyle. You just need to figure out how, and that’s what you haven’t been able to do yet.

Having helped over 10,000 people in the last four years through our services at Active Life, I can say with absolute certainty that the most important factor that must be in place for a person to reach symptom resolution and performance gains without medical intervention is the presence of belief that it can be done. Let me say that a different way, if you want to feel better and perform better, you must believe that it is possible to do so. 

Allow me to help you do that; the reason why medical interventions fail, is often times because those interventions manage the machine, and not the human. 

• A drug that is injected into a joint for example is done so with the assumption that reducing inflammation will reduce joint pain, but does not consider what caused that joint pain to get there in the first place. The shot eliminates the inflammation, the pain goes away, and six months later it’s back and worse than ever. The reason this is a massive opportunity for you to have a revelation is because if you thought the shot was going to work, you might never have considered the underlying cause as still being around. Now you know, and there is something else you can do. 
• The MRI shows a labrum tear in your shoulder, which leads to potentially failed physical therapy on that shoulder, and then to a surgical recommendation, which also doesn’t work. Why? Because had they imaged the shoulder that feels good, they might have found the exact same damage on both sides, yet symptoms only on one. This would mean that the pain you are feeling is not from what they found on the MRI but from a functional issue that was never considered. The physical therapy may have been on the wrong shoulder, and the surgery completely unnecessary. The reason why this should be exciting to you is because if you are one of the millions of failed surgeries that happen every year, now you might know why. If you’re considering surgery, now you have an alternative. 
• You got homework assignments from the doctor or coach, and you didn’t do them. At least not with the intensity of intent that you know you could have. The reason this usually happens is because you didn’t believe that the homework assignments would work, or you didn’t trust the person who gave them to you. This should hit you like a ton of bricks. If you had more trust in the process or the practitioner, you might actually be pain free already. 

At Active Life we have a very specific series of factors to consider in order to help someone get out of pain without going to the doctor or missing the gym (or whatever active lifestyle recreations they enjoy). 

We look at things through a lens that allows for very complex things to become very simple things. We just want to know; “When did load exceed capacity?” Basically what that means is this.

• What are your pre-existing conditions that we cannot change? Disc herniations, old sprains, broken bones, rheumatoid arthritis, are all examples of pre-existing conditions. 
• What do your recovery habits look like? Your sleep quality and quantity, your nutrition, and your stress, all create a full picture for your recovery habits.
• What is your dysfunctional movement(s)? Your lack of flexibility, Poor mobility, Strength balance deviations, skill limitations, are all examples of your functional diagnosis. 
• What are the things that you want to do every day, and which of them cause you pain? Do those same activities with less intensity also cause you pain? For example, if squatting with no weight is asymptomatic, but squatting with 100# hurts, then we have a clear capacity issue, and not a knee structure issue. 

I hope this is starting to make sense. The next step in our process is evaluating your entire system to determine the low hanging fruit. We do this by considering a number of factors at the same time, in a specific order. You see, when you go to the chiropractor, usually you get adjusted. The physical therapist gives you exercises. The massage therapist massages. And the Acupuncturist places needles. We want you to look at yourself as a person, with a complex set of issues that all need to be considered before the best option for intervention can be selected and applied. You might be surprised to hear that some of our clients don’t get exercises from us, because what they actually need is for someone to take away some of the exercises they are currently doing because they don’t fit the end goal and are destructive. 

We go through things in the following order:

1. Do you have full flexibility? Flexibility is going to be defined as “passive range of motion”.
2. Do you have full mobility? Mobility is going to be defined as “active range of motion”.
3. Do you have appropriate strength balance? Strength balance pertains to your need to have specific strength capacity on both sides of a joint to ensure the correct muscles are activated to complete a task.
4. Do you have the necessary skills to perform a movement? Doing something wrong can cause pain. 
5. How are your recovery habits? This one actually supersedes the rest and is considered the highest order problem until corrected. I listed it last because it works in conjunction with all of the rest. 

Once we can identify for a client where they are lacking in the five categories above, usually, the rest is pretty simple. Just work on whatever most needs improvement. Simple! And you can do this for yourself too. If you understand what movement should look like, look at your movement, and compare it to what normal looks like. If you know what your strength should be from right to left, front to back, then test yours and see where it fits, then bring up what’s weak and deload what’s strong. If you can subjectively say that you know your sleep, nutrition, and stress could improve, what would be the easiest one for you to change? Take the first step to changing it. 

Here are some strength balance numbers as a reference for you:

Deadlift 100%

Back Squat 80%

Front Squat 67%

Front Rack Step Up 33%

Pull-up 100%

1 Arm High Pull 33% 

1 Arm Shoulder Press 33%

You should be able to perform each of the movements above with a slower down, faster up tempo. 

There is of course more to it than simple if A then B formulas, but you can start with the if A then B steps and get them all straightened out. In most cases, fixing step 1 is enough to show you that there is a possibility you can get better, even a probability.

This stuff is simple, not easy, and you can do it. If you want help, we have helped thousands of people from all over the world and we turn away everyone who we aren’t confident is a fit, so feel free to reach out with no cost or risk associated with the call. 

There is one thing I want to leave you with. In most cases, if you are still in pain, it is because you have decided to stop working to feel better. Deep down, you know this is true and that’s why it bothers you to read it here. Now, the reality that you have more to consider has slapped you in the face. What are you going to do about it?

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Sean Pastuch

Dr. Sean Pastuch is the owner and founder of Active Life. Since 2016, Active Life has helped over 10,000 people get out of pain using lifestyle, mindset, and exercise intervention, without going to the doctor or missing the gym, from anywhere in the world. This early success has lead to market demand from physios, chiros, and coaches to learn how Active Life has done it. Since 2018, Active Life has educated over 400 health and fitness professionals on how to best serve their clients and patients.

Latest posts by Sean Pastuch

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• Are you in pain? Have you tried everything? - July 26, 2019