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When setting goals, it’s the upside of reaching those goals that get most, if not all, the focus. The promise of a fitter, stronger, more energetic body understandably steals our attention.

But in doing so, we ignore the downsides of getting and maintaining the goals we’ve set.

Before you carve your goals in marble, ask yourself:

What are the downsides you have to endure to get to your goals? Are you willing to take on those downsides?

If you are, excellent, go forth. Carve the marble.

If not, still excellent. You now have the freedom to explore new goals. Goals with hardships you’re more willing to accept.

It’s easier to put up with the downsides when you know what to expect.

-J

When dealing with chronic pain, it might be tempting to stop physical activity, especially when exercise increases the pain. But on the scale of best to worst ideas, stopping physical activity altogether is somewhere just below communism. As in, not excellent.

Being physically active contributes to both physical and psychological well-being. Both of these are important for managing and overcoming chronic pain. So instead of stopping altogether, the goal is to find a level of physical activity you can tolerate

Reintroduce exercise at a level you feel comfortable doing without fear. Where you sit in this fear meter depends on your psychological makeup. Some of us are naturally more anxious and fearful and need a gentle start. While others are more like Fonzie, aaayyy.

The same rule goes for pain. As we established in the previous blog, chronic pain rarely equates to physical damage. Find the level of pain you can tolerate during exercise without lighting up your nervous system like Nakatomi Plaza.

For most people staying below 5 out of 10 is a good starting point. But some have to go as low as 1, whereas Fonzie could go higher. As with fear, there’s no hard and fast rule, as it really depends on you.

-J

In 2012 I did, what I’d now call, a stupid, ego-fueled workout. In the middle of it, I felt a twinge in my low back, freaked the shit out and went home. The following day I woke up with nagging back pain.

That morning I had this heavy sinking feeling of “nothing will ever be the same.” As if I’d just been told that I’d been randomly chosen to sit in a live electric chair that afternoon. Looking back at it now with the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, it was a proper overreaction if there ever was one. But I didn’t know any better.

The first physiotherapist I saw couldn’t help me (understandably because all my back needed was time to heal). So after a few appointments, he sent me for a scan with an urgency as if I was about to give birth to an asteroid.

According to the scan, I had three or four (I forget) disc bulges in my low back. Reading that felt like I had now been chosen to sit in two live electric chairs simultaneously. While being forced to parent a growing asteroid.

Those experiences and the years that followed all contributed to the back pain story I was telling myself. Unrepairable, broken and forever doomed.

I stopped training for a while. I tried Pilates, stretching, movement work, core strength, eastern medicine… If it was at least borderline legal, I probably tried it.

Then, in 2018 I saw a chiropractor. Not because he was a chiropractor but because he was the only clinician within a 25km radius with the strength training qualifications I was looking for. I was done being poked on the table.

He was the first person to say that there was nothing wrong with my back. Unlike others, he didn’t tell me to stop doing anything.

That interaction and the other two that followed changed the back pain story I was telling myself. My back was resilient and strong. It wasn’t broken. I started feeling better. I was more confident doing exercises and movements I had been scared of for years because he helped me to change my pain story.

Here’s where it’s at.

The stories we tell about our pain and injuries affect our pain. The circumstances around the time of our injury can leave long-lasting, debilitating mental scars. We must consciously work to change the stories we tell ourselves about our pain and ourselves.

Anyways. Matt works in Sydney, hit him up. It sounds like hyperbole, but he changed my life. And I’ve referred countless Sydney-based clients his way ever since.

-J

How you eat plays a big part in your immune system. When you have an injury (or illness, for that matter), your immune system doses you up with some good ol’ inflammation to help the healing process. Once the injury’s healed, the immune system takes its foot off the inflammation pump.

Most of the time.

Living like Winston can mess up the immune system, so it doesn’t know which way is east. Like an old friend oblivious to social cues, inflammation hangs around long after the (healing) party’s finished. This contributes to ongoing low-grade inflammation, which can make the nervous system more sensitive to pain.

A poor diet also negatively affects mental health and reduces stress tolerance. Which then further contributes to a sensitive nervous system and reduced pain tolerance. It’s a vicious cycle.

Now I could harp on forever about which specific foods are the best for reducing chronic pain. Instead, I rather leave that to the experts who study these things.

But, focusing mostly on the principles of the Mediterranean diet would do a lot of good in our fight against chronic pain.

This week’s all about reducing chronic pain by desensitising the nervous system. See yesterday’s email for context.

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In 2015, we spent a month in Europe. We visited friends and family in Finland, got lost (and drunk) in Berlin, ate dumplings in Krakow, and felt incredible sadness in Auschwitz. Yet, one of the most vivid memories I have from that trip is front squatting pain-free at a dingy gym in Helsinki.

I had dealt with chronic back pain since 2012, and as anyone with chronic pain can testify, that shit can get debilitating. I had pain the day before boarding the flight. And I had pain the first day I got back to work after the trip.

But here’s the thing, I had zero pain in between.

We know that long-term stress and other emotional drag hurt our mental and physical health. But they can also sensitise the nervous system and make us more receptive to pain.

I’ve seen this with clients. And I have experienced it myself. Learning to manage stress and improve emotional well-being is a crucial piece of the chronic pain puzzle.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that often treats the body and the brain as separate entities. Even though we know that they’re as tightly linked as Beavis & Butthead.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take action as individuals.

I’ve written about managing stress ad nauseam in the past. This one from last year is an excellent place to start, even if I say so myself (and I do). Just sub the fat loss for pain.

-J

Chronic pain is about as enjoyable as listening to Justin Bieber’s latest hit single on repeat while piecing together a 6-shelf cupboard from IKEA without instructions. In the dark. On a carpet made out of awkwardly pointed Legos. While being surrounded by active volcanoes.

All pain sensations are produced in the brain, regardless of how they feel, where you feel them, and whether you’ve had the pain for a day or years.

Immediate, short-term pain (less than 30 days) is often a cause of something going on in the location of the pain. Stuff like a broken ankle, dislocated shoulder or paper cut from being too enthusiastic with that Chinese takeaway box.

Ongoing, persistent chronic pain (more than 30 days) is less about the structural changes in the body. Instead of tissue damage, chronic pain is about the sensitivity of the nervous system. And the nervous system is this ridiculously complex thing affected by our environment, culture, psychology, society and biology.

In other words, the nervous system produces chronic pain, even when the original cause of the pain has already healed.

Here’s the good news.

It’s possible to retrain the nervous system to reduce and eliminate chronic pain. 

Let’s spend the rest of this week figuring out how.

-J

Somewhere along the way, we started thinking that motivation means we always feel like showing up.

Yes, we need the motivation to start. To find our ‘why’ behind taking action.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll always want to show up.

A true problem with motivation arises when the ‘why’ is no longer important. And that can happen.

But more likely, it’s that we just don’t feel like it today.

And not feeling like it today has nothing to do with motivation.

-J

For eight months, I had a new, Costco-size bag of creatine sitting in the cupboard. Staring at me daily with its piercing orange label. For eight months, I had all the best intentions to open it tomorrow.

Then tomorrow would come, and I’d think, I can’t even. I’ll do it tomorrow.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I kept putting it off because I knew the bag was annoying to pull out, open up, and then try to reach into without spilling the content all over the kitchen floor. And then try to rewind that whole sequence to get the bag in the cupboard? I can’t even.

One evening, I mustered the little willpower I had left at 6pm and pulled the sucker out. I filled a small takeaway container with creatine which I then put next to the vitamin D I take with an obsessive devotion.

I haven’t missed a day of creatine since.

The moral of the story?

Friction, however tiny or ridiculous, is a stubborn donkey. And often, the easiest path forward is by shoving it out of the way.

-J

If mental barriers hold you from where you want your health and fitness to be. Stopping you from becoming who you want to become.

It’s easy to get lost in the oblivion of searching for the book, idea, guru, or cult that gives you the jackhammer to break through.

But it’s likely that you already have all kinds of jackhammers. You just need help learning how to use them.

There’s a good chance that a book, idea, guru, or cult isn’t what you need right now.

-J

When life gets busy, it’s easy to get caught up in the immediacy of existence. With our heads down, we focus on the task at hand.

Life turns into survival-themed whack-a-mole.

And sometimes this savage task-whacking is exactly what we need to get through.

But when we’re stuck with our heads down for too long, how do we know if we’re heading in the right direction?

Are our day-to-day actions taking us where we want to go?

-J