Physical pain is a universal experience, yet it remains one of the least understood aspects of human health. Whether it’s a stubbed toe or chronic back pain, understanding the nature of physical pain can empower us to manage it effectively and improve our quality of life.
- Introduction
- Great Books For Across the Board Improvements
- Approaches to Managing Pain
- Key Concepts for Pain Management
- Special Focus: Back Pain
Introduction
Physical pain is a universal experience, yet it remains one of the least understood aspects of human health. Whether it’s a stubbed toe or chronic back pain, understanding the nature of physical pain can empower us to manage it effectively and improve our quality of life.
Great Books For Across the Board Improvements
Approaches to Managing Pain
Physio Therapy
Physio therapy is a great model for improvement. You go, they coach you, and then you have to do the work.
Critical because Practice makes permanent. See
Putting up a tonne of effort to climb the wrong laddaer
The source of pain is rarely the place you need to fix it.
Massage, Stretch, Strengthen
Massage (aka Release) feels amazing, stretching good, and Strengthening Does Nothing. Inconvenially, masssage only last 20 minutes, stretching a day or 2, but strengthing lasts for ever.
Self Release: Massage and Foam Roller, Tennis Ball
- Foam roller and Tennis ball are mostly self massage, which is mostly less effective then an expert nailing it.
- Remember this is not fixing the problem, it’s giving you a window to maximize your efficiency in fixing the problem.
Key Concepts for Pain Management
Tightness is the signal/symptom it is not the problem.
Mental Pain => Anxiety => Signal to Focus => Instead of asking why am I anxious, and what am I trying to control, how do I maximize my influence
Physical Pain => Tightness => Signal to Focus => Instead of asing how do I loosen, ask what is weak? how do I strengthen.
Negative Feedback loop - When you are tight.
Your body is designed to operate smoothly and symettrically. However, we can also operate with mitigations, but those are of course increasing our injury risk. So if we’re tight on one side we compensate, and that puts us at higher risk of future injury
Flexibility vs Mobility
-
Flexibility - How far you can move through a range of motion
- Stiffness
- Ligament
- Joint Connection (Like with Hip ball and socket, or ankle flexion))
-
Mobility - How far you can move through a range of motion under your own power
- Strength Limited
So why do we do massage, and stretch
Because while that tightness is a symptom, it’s also limiting range of motion, and by loosening (even temporarily), we can be more effective at strengthing (again exactly the same as anxiety in mental pain).
Special Focus: Back Pain
Stuart McGill And the Big 3
If you’ve heard of the McGill big three, that’s this guy. Trivia tidbits:
- He did self experimentation by sticking a needle into every muscle and zapping it with electricity to improve diagnosis
- He broke his cervical spine
- He is candian, and a professor of Waterloo (my Alama Matter)
| Book | Audience |
|---|---|
| Back Mechanic | Laymans Guide |
| Back Fitness and Performance | Pretty complex, trainer/physio Therapist |
| Low Back Disorders | Super Technical Doctors/Physio Therapists |
Using the 5 whys to understand pain
From our favorite COE process - the 5 whys:
- Why Pain?
- Tightness
- Why Tightness?
- Body Protecting From Injury
- Why Protecting From Injury
- Body feels unstability on joints
- Why unstable?
- Lack of muscular Endurance
This is what’s great about the mcgill big 3, it’s isometrics to build endurance, as opposed to strength. And it does so with the minimal amount of back load (which would worsen the injury)
Spine Stiffness requires hip and shoulder flexibilty/mobility
Your back supposed to stay strait (especially your lower back), and your motion is supposed to come from your hips and shoulders (Ball and Sockets)
Rotation for stiffness
OK, a very hard to read book “Becoming a supple leopoard”, but a point which he hammers in no one else does is the importance of external rotation, both in the hips and in the shoulders:
Coaches talk about “bending the bar bell”, or rotating your pits forward or screwing your feet into the ground. What they are “cueing” you for is to externally rotate your humorous or femor into the socket, this pulls the slack out of the joint making it stiff.
Note in the hips, when you pint your feet out you have more ROM, but you loose tension, and that tension has down sides, being stiff gives you strength.
Shoulder external rotation was really hard for me, and also inetsting since the way I do pushups is I let me elbows go perpendictular to my core (which is apparently not what you want).
Lack of should external rotation meant i had really weeak wrists and put extra strain on my wrists.
To have strength, you need stabilitiy or your body shuts off stretngth to avoid injury (hopefully), so you have a few ways to get stiffness, one is stiffning random muscles the other is to
Does stiffning cause alignment?
Flexibility vs Mobilily
Flexibility - How far you can move without restriction (aka how far someone can move you) vs how far you can move yourself.