Take my patient, Kevin, for example.
He and I met in 2018, at a hip mobility workshop that I led at a local CrossFit. At the time, his body was pretty beat up from past injuries and fatigued from his high-stress finance job.
Kevin worked out every morning at 5am before hopping on the commuter rail for his routine 12-hour day.
His morning workouts mentally prepared him for the rest of his day.
So you can imagine his frustration when he couldn’t squat or deadlift without stabbing back pain.
Anyways, with Kevin it was obvious that we absolutely had to keep him working out while we dealt with his back issue.
Just by switching him from a back squat to a front squat and a conventional deadlift to a sumo-style, he was able to continue lifting with minimal discomfort.
This meant he could continue to workout while we were dealing with his back issue on the side.
The result?
He got stronger in other areas while we fixed his back pain simultaneously - which incidentally was caused by his squat stance and locked hips.
Now what’s crazy is that the same kind of pain may be fixed for one person in a completely different way than in another.
For example, another patient of mine, Aimee, came to me with acute sciatica. It started a few days before when she went to sit down on a chair expecting it to be firm - except it was soft. Her back immediately seized up.
Aimee was up from Miami visiting family in Swampscott. Her husband had to stay home for work, so it was just her and her two boys (2 & 5).
“I can’t take care of my kids if I can’t move. I have no idea how I’m getting back to Florida like this,” she said.
And she was right. Having to constantly bend over to pick up her boys or get her youngest one out of the crib while dealing with radiating nerve pain down her leg? That’s awful!
Anyways - the first time we met, I helped Aimee modify her movements so that she could take care of her boys without aggravating her back pain.
Over the next couple sessions, I helped her continue to progress her movement and get stronger. Two weeks later Aimee and her boys returned to Florida.
She texted me from the Miami airport, “I made it! No pain!! Thank you so much!”