Category: Daily

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

There are many balls we keep in the air on any given day. Being a partner, parent, friend, daughter, son, our work, possible hobbies, causes we care about… They all demand and deserve some of our time and focus.

And somehow we have to add health and fitness to our daily juggle. Unless we’re willing to drop a ball or two, it’s unreasonable to think that we can afford to give fitness our undivided attention.

Yet, this twisted perfect-or-nothing attitude often sabotages our health and fitness progress. We aim for a 10/10 score and feel defeated when we can’t maintain it.

What would happen if you’d give yourself permission to score a 7 or 8 in health and fitness?

What would you lose? What would you gain?

-J

The off-the-cuff reply, “I don’t have time”, dodges the question.

There’s always time.

We just decided to spend it doing something else.

-J

When limited flexibility stops you from doing an exercise, you have a choice to make. Either:

1. Carve out some time from your strength and fitness training to improve your flexibility.
2. Don’t address the flexibility problem, but adjust your exercise selection so you can have the same training effect with the flexibility you already have.
3. Keep doing what you’re doing even if it doesn’t feel great.

For the third option, I’d expect an argument that would make Christopher Hitchens pale in comparison. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t any. But still.

If the limited flexibility stops you from doing a particular exercise but has zero effect on your life outside of training, and improving that flexibility doesn’t align with your long-term health and training goals, pick the second option.

For any other scenario, pick the first option.

-J