Pain, Soft Tissue Work and Training To Move More Freely

This post is going to get more personal than most and the reality is that if you haven't been through one of these journeys with soft tissue intervention and adaptation then you may not understand it. This is ok, just take my personal experience for what it is worth. What I want to do is provide context for undergoing the highly beneficial process of soft tissue restoration. The goal is not to advocate for engaging with the most blunt force trauma that you can survive every week. The goal is to make restoration occur and that can happen through many different modes. Take the time you need and use the ones that work the best for you while experiencing the least amount of suffering!

When I was 25 I started developing a pretty terrible case of knee pain. It was so bad that it kind of left a sour note on a Hawaiian vacation I had with my family. Having never been to the big island this was kind of a bummer. We spent a day traveling around the big island in a car and it was a tight fit which normally would have been fine. The reality was that every time I got back to my seat my knee would feel like it was getting compressed beyond what it could tolerate. It's a feeling that's hard to describe. The only way I know how to describe it would be a pain that felt like the joint was going to explode internally. So after 5 or 6 stops around the island it just became the recurring theme of stumbling out of the car, limping around, shaking it out, walking normally for about 20-30 minutes for some sight seeing and then getting back in the car for what I knew would be a completely miserable experience until I was able to get out again.

It was after this experience that I finally decided to get serious and get professional help. I had played a lot of sports and never had any joint injuries outside of the pretty standard lateral ankle sprain. I had broken bones and I had strained muscles but I had never experienced joint pain that I couldn't escape like this. So I was in a new territory of experiencing pain that didn't seem like it had a healing curve to it. It just didn't go away. So I made an appointment for physical therapy and I received the diagnosis of "You are kind of tight". Which didn't really help a lot but it gave me a problem to solve. Which looking back was all I needed. I'm a firm believer that if you can name the problem you can fix it or find reasonably acute solutions to it. However, if you can't name it........good luck!!

So I tried to stretch........nada. I still hurt every single day. I even tried to load a barbell on top of my back with 185 and do lunges with it hoping it would force the tissues to stretch. As horrible as that may sound those were my first two strategies for solving this knee problem. Looking back I am glad I didn't blow the tendons off my knee cap. However, I was bound and determined not to live a life of suffering so I started my exploration into implement based soft tissue work. To be honest I didn't expect it to work because if doing lunges with 185 didn't work how could a goofy/squishy foam roller do anything? With that said though I was willing to spend 30 dollars to experiment and see what was possible even if I was convinced that the modality would yield me little.

So I went to my neighborhood Target store and purchased a CAN DO little red foam roller that felt like a pool noodle. I went home and started putting my quads on it and I got the shock of a lifetime...........it was bad......really bad.......like crying tears of blood bad! AHHHHHHH!!!! But when I rolled my quads my knees didn't hurt so I knew I was on to something even if I didn't buy into it immediately. I rolled my glutes and they hurt, I rolled my calves and they really hurt, I started rolling my feet with a lacrosse ball, as well as rolling out my adductors, upper back, lower back, pecs, lats, front delts.........there was almost no area of my body that was not painful. I couldn't believe it! How was my whole body full of pain in the soft tissues and yet I didn't feel any of that when I was working or working out? I was totally bewildered but determined to fix the problem and this was the first thing that seemed like a tangible solution.

So I made a pact with myself that I would roll everything out every morning until I was completely pain free with any and all movements I could make with a foam roller or lacrosse ball. It was a brutal pact but come rain or shine every day before work I got on the roller and the lacrosse ball and suffered for 30 minutes. Some days were worse than others but what I started noticing was that as the ouch resolved in the tissues my joints started to allow me to move better and with less pain. I could run again and do deep barbell back squats with zero issues. More or less I was pretty much healed and then I had the thought that changed the trajectory of my training philosophy.

If I am like this at 25..........what is everyone else who is older and weaker than me experiencing?

OH NO!!!

I started having all my clients roll out with some kind of soft tissue intervention whether it was a foam roller, lacrosse ball, some kind of stick work, etc. For some people it helped.......and for others it really was more of a problem than it was worth. This lead me to pursue IASTM(Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization), mobility flossing, Body Tempering, percussive massage, vibration massage and cupping so I could be more specific with soft tissue interventions. I got massages from professional LMT's as well but fundamentally I was all aboard the soft tissue intervention train. If I could intervene with my own pain and help others intervene with their own pain through training as well as soft tissue restoration then it was going to be an amazing dynamic process!!

WHOA!!

I have become more nuanced and specific in how to approach these problems after learning from some great athletes and coaches but fundamentally this process is a cornerstone of how I approach training people. We are all going to have places in the body where there is an abundance of tension, stiffness or tightness and until we restore some soft tissue quality to those regions we will not improve our movement. If we don't improve movement AND increase the demands on the movement system eventually we are going to run into big pain as we progressively overload the body. Regardless of how you are training the reality is that if you are not taking care of the soft tissues they will eventually accumulate enough rigidity that it will cause pain.

If you can learn anything from my personal pain and experience it should be that you don't have to needlessly suffer. Sometimes what we need to do is be a little open minded to a process that is unfamiliar as well as being willing to be uncomfortable for a prolonged period of time in order to create change. The human body is amazing, dynamic and full of incredibly adaptable structures. If you give it the appropriate cues and guidance for a long enough period of time it will adapt to the demands placed on it and it will improve far beyond expectation. Don't be afraid to try new strategies and trial new solutions to problems that may not readily make sense to you. Your ability to develop incredible capacity with your body is only limited by the intelligence of your approach and your willingness to work hard consistently until you are changed forever!