Lower back pain. Knees hurting when you lunge or squat. Shoulders pinch when you raise your hand above your head. This sound familiar? Well, if it doesn’t, good for you! You are either doing the right thing or you are young and it hasn’t hit you yet! Which one are you?
The funny thing about the above paragraph is.. it’s gonna happen to you. You’re either going to start getting these pains as you get older because of “life”, or you won’t, because you navigated “life” in a way that considered the paragraph. If you are active, it becomes apparent you are contributing to the pain by what your are doing, or you are counteracting the pain by what you are doing.
Just because you exercise doesn’t fix everything. How you exercise is an important play here. If you just beat yourself up and grind it out, I have a feeling you’ll feel this stuff sooner than your 35th birthday or will already be exposed to some of those slight pains. If you take an educated approach or a focused approach of exercise, you’ll be better off in terms of daily liveable actions. There are tons of people who work out all the time yet still have “a bad shoulder” or “knees that don’t like squats”. There may be a reason for those things that your exercise is actually contributing to.
This is why it is important to assess how you are moving so you can play with no restrictions. If you were told in five years the way you are going, you won’t be able to raise your hand above your chest, would you do something about it, or would you be like “well, I better enjoy these five years”? I’d guess you’d do something about it. You can do that now. Get a movement assessment and THEN develop and exercise is program that not only benefits how you look, but how you feel and function!
I know not everyone enjoys the act of physical activity because… it’s challenging, but if you could make it less painful and MORE beneficial, wouldn’t you?