Barbell Shrugged - Your 2020 Plan to Becoming Pain-Free with Dr. Sean - Active Life Radio #24

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everybody welcome back to active life radio on the shrugged collective network i'm dr sean pastuch i'm your host and today we're going to talk about why if you're still in pain it's because you've chosen to be and we're going to talk about how you can change that in 2020. Maybe you make your New Year's resolution getting out of pain. And this year you actually find some success with that resolution. To do that, there's going to be a process that we're going to go through. It's going to take some very intentional work on your behalf. And I'm going to teach you how to do that work over the course of this show. It's going to be a quickie. It's going to be a valuable one if you put it to use. As always, today's show is brought to you by our friends at Organifi.

Starting point is 00:00:49 That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com. Head to Organifi.com. Use the code SHRUGGED at checkout to get yourself 20% off and enjoy the gold juice that I drink before bed. You drink it warm. You just pour some hot water into it. You stir it up and you get a nice anti-inflammatory hug from the great tasting gold juice. It really is that simple. I know that for you guys, taste is a huge thing. It's not just, oh, it's really good for me. If it tastes like dog shit, I'll take it if it's good for me. I know that that's not how this works. I wouldn't drink it if it didn't taste good. The gull juice tastes good. Organifi.com. Use the code shrug to check out and enjoy. This show is also brought to you by my favorite company in the world, Active Life. It's my company, Active Life. We're helping

Starting point is 00:01:44 thousands of people to get out of pain without going to the doctor or giving up their active lifestyles. These shows that you listen to here on the Shrug Collective Network are all about how we've done that, how we do that, what you can take from those shows to be able to do it for yourself. That's what the show is all about. So if you find what we talk about on this show compelling and you're in the market for getting out of pain and you don't really want to give up the gym or go to the doctor's office or take medications or get sliced, you're tired of being told you got to work out around it or you're getting too old for this or you're crazy, man,

Starting point is 00:02:20 you got to slow down. Well, then head to active lifeliferx.com slash shrugged and let's talk. Let's talk. You get on a call with one of our staff members. They make sure first and foremost that you're a good fit to work with us. Believe it or not, we still turn down almost 30% of people who reach out. And when I say turn down, what I mean is refer to a local doctor who we help to vet. How cool is that? The worst case scenario of getting on a call with us is that you get a hand-selected referral to a doctor in your area. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool. The best case scenario is your pain goes away and you get your life back, which seems like a pretty good opportunity to me. So active life, rx.com slash shrugged. We would love to talk to you and see if it's a fit. Now let's talk about why I say,

Starting point is 00:03:14 if you're still in pain, it's because you've chosen to be, and then we'll unpack how to change that this year. The reason that I say, if you're still in pain, it's because you've chosen to be is because in most cases, those of you who are dealing with aches or pains or anything like them, something that's chronically bothering you, even if it's very low grade, you're dealing with something that somebody else in the world is also dealing with, yet doesn't have the symptoms. So what I mean by that is this. Almost 80% of people will experience some kind of a disc injury in their life, yet less than 50% of people will ever know that they had a disc injury. How does that happen? The way that that happens

Starting point is 00:04:05 is that only the 50% get the imaging done. Only less than the 50% ever feel the symptoms. So it's possible, in fact, it's probable that you have a disc injury that is asymptomatic. What happens though is once you get imaging done and that imaging shows that you have a disc injury, when I say imaging, I'm talking about MRI. It shows that you have a disc injury, herniation, protrusion, extrusion, bulge, whatever. Once you find that out and the doctor tells you this correlates with the pain you're having, you become the person who has a disc injury and therefore has pain from it. But that's not true. It's not necessarily true. What if your disc isn't actually causing your pain? What if your interpretation of pain is totally wrong? How is it possible that

Starting point is 00:05:16 somebody else is walking around with the exact same thing that you have and they don't have any pain. How is that possible? That's what you need to be thinking about. Change your mindset to this. Change it from, I have this thing and that's why I'm in pain to I have this thing and so do millions of other people and lots of them don't have pain. So I wonder what they're doing that I'm not. Now you have a solvable problem and that's totally different than resigning yourself to the fact that you're a victim of the pain that you've been dealing with because of the radiographic finding that told you something is in your body. Now, are there examples of this that are totally unreasonable to say, you know, just because it's on the MRI or the x-ray doesn't mean it's true? Yeah, of course. If, if God forbid, you should find some cancer on imaging, like get that taken care of.

Starting point is 00:06:26 If you have a fracture on imaging, get that taken care of. These are things that, you know, require immediate action. The value of imaging is to look for ominous findings, which means something that could possibly be life-threatening or something that requires immediate medical intervention. That is the major value of imaging. Something that is ominous or something that requires immediate medical intervention. That's the value of imaging. The mistake that we make with imaging is we tell people,

Starting point is 00:07:03 you have this, therefore you're going to feel that for the rest of your life. And that's not true. You need life. And that's not true. You need to know that that's not true. So for those of you listening to this who have a back injury, when you wake up in the morning, it's really stiff. You get out of bed, it's like, ah, that sucks. You walk around, it starts to loosen up a little bit. Sometimes brushing your teeth is a nightmare because your back will go out on you.

Starting point is 00:07:30 You feel like you want to drop to a knee. Not often. It just happens sometimes. You still go to the gym because you do that, but you throw a back belt on every time you go to the gym. You keep the weights fairly light. You try not to pull from the ground too often. You're really not giving it your all, but that's okay. You know, you're trying. You've been modifying movements now for six months or a year, but you're there. If this is you, I'm talking to you specifically. If this is not you, I'm still talking to you. Maybe someone told you you have tendonitis. It gets better when you warm up,

Starting point is 00:08:07 but it's been around for a long time and rest isn't making it any better. Talking to you too. You probably don't have tendonitis, but that's a podcast for another day. If I'm talking to you, and you know by now if I'm talking to you, what know, by now, if I'm talking to you, what you need to be asking yourself is, does somebody else in the world have exactly the same condition that I do and doesn't have the pain or without the pain, whatever the proper English there would have been. And the answer to that question is yes. Then you have to be asking yourself,

Starting point is 00:08:43 what can I do to alleviate the pain? Maybe in 2020, alleviate the pain, by the way, without medication, surgery, or giving up my active lifestyle. If 2020 is your year to do it, and you don't want to work with us at Active Life and have us tell you what to do all along the way, give you the certainty that you might need to get yourself through it. If you're the kind of person who's like, you know what? I want to try this myself first. No problem. I'm going to tell you exactly what to do now. And then you can try it for yourself. The first thing is you have to believe that it's possible for you to get out of pain. You have to believe that it's possible for you to do this. If you don't believe that it's possible, it's not going to work. You must believe it's possible. Step one. Step two, you must come up with a plan and you must stick to that plan long enough to make sure that you've given it a chance to work before deciding it does not work and pivoting to something else. If, for example, your plan is I'm going to rest it, fine. Rest it, rest it long enough. Let's call that four weeks.

Starting point is 00:10:04 If four weeks of rest, but when I say rest, I mean absolutely nothing. You're not going to the gym and rowing. You're not going for light jogs. You're resting it. Unless it's your shoulder and then you can go for a jog. Give it a month. If it doesn't get better, rest is not the solution. Move on. I would strongly recommend you go to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash theactivelife,

Starting point is 00:10:36 and search for our movement assessment. It might be called Movement Screen on YouTube. Put yourself through it. If you have limitations in the movement screen, then start to modify your workouts in a way that allows you to do them without exceeding the range of motion that you have. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into gyms and talked to people who have shoulder pain and then ask them to lay on the ground and bring their arms over their head as far as they can. They can't get their arms to the floor.

Starting point is 00:11:07 So imagine yourself lying on your back and just trying to flex your shoulders as far as they go. Elbow straight, can you get your index finger to the floor over your head? And they can't do it. I'm like, when does your shoulder hurt? They're like, oh, usually when I do shoulder overhead, kettlebell swings, muscle ups, or any kind of kipping pull-up. I'm like, no wonder. You're literally trying to force your body through a range of motion that you don't have. So the first thing you can do is if you go through our movement screen at youtube.com slash theactivelife, and you find yourself limited, start to modify your range of motion

Starting point is 00:11:42 in the gym to match your limited range of motion without weight in the movement screen. That will take you away from doing things that are obviously injurious, that are driving symptoms. The next thing I want you to do is start doing some very, very simple strength balance testing. Test your left arm versus your right arm doing the same thing. Test your left leg versus your right leg doing the same thing. Can you press as many times on the right as you can on the left? Can you high pull as many times on the right as you can on the left? Can you step up as many times on the left as you can on the right?

Starting point is 00:12:27 Can you single leg deadlift as many times on the right and the can on the left? Can you step up as many times on the left as you can on the right? Can you single leg deadlift as many times on the right and the left? You get the gist. Can you jump as far laterally to the right as you can to the left? If you're not within 15%, one 5%, you have a deficiency, start cleaning it up. It's simple. Start seeing if you can control the eccentric part of your contractions. What I mean by that is stop slamming into the bottom of your squats and expecting your patellar tendons to bring you out of it. Control the negative. Take two months of training in which every single rep that you do has a controlled negative. Let me repeat that. Take two months in which every single rep that you do has a controlled negative. Did you know that one of the biggest reasons why people who

Starting point is 00:13:26 use CrossFit as their fitness methodology, one of the biggest reasons why they find tendon injuries is because they are doing an exorbitant amount of concentric contraction and almost a negligible amount of eccentric. That means all of the work that they're doing is to move a weight away from gravity, and they're not doing any work controlling the weight as it returns with gravity. Now, I also want to be clear here. There is no suggestion that CrossFit is dangerous and CrossFit is bad for your tendons. CrossFit done well includes these kinds of contractions. However, most CrossFit gyms are not utilizing them. So if you go to the gym in the last month, you haven't done an eccentric contraction of any sort. It's been shoulder overhead, repeat, repeat, repeat. Everything is for time. In my estimation, that's not CrossFit done well.

Starting point is 00:14:37 That means that you probably have tendon issues. They're either present and you feel them or they're growing. So those are some very simple things that you can do. Step number one, believe that it's possible. Step number two, measure your range of motion and modify your movements to fit your anatomy. If you can't touch your toes, stop pulling a bar off the ground. Step number three, measure your strength balance from left to right. If you have a major deficiency, spend two months closing that gap. Step number four, or option number four, I should call it option number four. Option number four, spend two months where every single lift that you do has an eccentric component to it that is controlled. Option five, rest. Take a solid month off. Those are your options if you want to try to get out

Starting point is 00:15:42 of pain on your own in 2020 without going to the doctor or giving up your active lifestyle and you've tried a bunch of other different things and they haven't worked. Give those a run. Another option for you obviously is reach out to us, activeliferx.com slash shrugged and we'll take the guesswork out of it for you. Not only will we tell you what's wrong and what's deficient, we'll tell you how we're going to improve it. And every step along the way, you'll have the clarity and the certainty of what needs to be done and how you can expect to feel when you get there. This is not about you buying from us. This is about you getting yourself out of pain for good, finally, in 2020. The reason why most people are in pain is because they've chosen to be.

Starting point is 00:16:32 The reason why I say that is because if somebody else in the world has the same condition that you have and they're not experiencing the pain, that means they're doing something different than you are. It also means you don't necessarily have to deal with pain. If somebody else has the same condition that you have and they don't have the pain that you have, you don't have to have the pain either. You got to believe. Happy New Year, guys. Talk to you in 20...

Starting point is 00:17:14 Oh, I think this comes out. I know where to be 20. Talk to you next week. Turn pro. All right, Shrug Nation. I hope you enjoyed that episode of Active Life Radio on the Shrug Collective Network. If you did, it would be a huge help for us to get the word out there. If you would head to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us an honest rating. If you want to go bonus mode, please feel free to leave us a review as well. Anything that you listened to that you're interested in doing yourself, if you want to work with an active life coach one-on-one yourself, head to active life, our x.com slash shrugged, fill out the application. And we'll be talking to you soon till then turn pro.

Barbell Shrugged - Your 2020 Plan to Becoming Pain-Free with Dr. Sean - Active Life Radio #24

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