Episode 21: Hurt Doesn't Mean Stop

Pain has a way of turning motivated people into quitters, even when they started training to feel better. Today we dig into what I call the injury paradox: aches and discomfort push us toward exercise, then the moment something flares up we assume the workout is “bad” and we abandon everything. That all-or-nothing loop is one of the fastest ways to lose progress, confidence, and consistency.

I walk through why most “workout injuries” aren’t caused by a single exercise. Strength training and conditioning often reveal a problem that was already developing from lifestyle, stress, sleep, old movement patterns, or years of chronic overload. We separate acute injuries from chronic issues, then talk about what to do when your body says “ouch”: listen, reduce irritation, and keep the rest of the system moving. Because use it or lose it is real, stopping completely can cost you muscle, stability, and resilience faster than you expect.

You’ll hear how I handle my own training as I get older, why ego is sneaky, and how to keep the goal in sight when the path has to change for a season. We also get practical about workout modifications: adjusting load, intensity, stability, and range of motion, swapping running for walking or incline work, and training around a painful area instead of burning the whole plan down. And we put the right professionals in the right roles, from coaching to physical therapy to your doctor.

If you’ve been stuck in a stop-start fitness cycle or you’re trying to train with chronic pain, this will give you a safer, smarter way forward. Subscribe, share this with a friend who keeps getting derailed, and leave a review, then tell me: what’s one change you can make to keep moving this week?

Transcript

Why Injuries Make Us Quit

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Okay, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the 1% Better Podcast with your host, Josh Williams. It has been, again, as always, a hot second longer than I want to be before I get to sit down, record, and talk about something that is on my mind and hopefully a valuable nugget for you all as well. So I guess we're going to hop right into this. So today I wanted to talk about something near and dear to my heart, and it is injuries. And just because something hurts doesn't mean we don't stop. We stop there. Wait, are we not supposed to work through injuries? Yes. When the body says, ouch, we want to listen to that. But that doesn't mean we stop the entire system. We don't stop the entire train just for one thing. So

The Injury Paradox Explained

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I want to first start out with the what we call the injury paradox when working out here. And the the funny thing is, is most people that we work with get started because they want to feel healthier, they want to have less aches and pains. They want to, you know, get sit from that fountain, sip from the fountain of youth, and and and so on and so forth. So discomfort will drive us to work up, it will drive us to make a change to feel better. But one of the biggest reasons people also leave is due to aches, pains, and injuries. And so we're caught in this middle of we just want the good, right? I'm uncomfortable. I know by doing this thing I will feel better. I am now doing this thing, I am feeling better. Something comes up. This is no longer good. So I do, I go back to what I was doing before. And so when you look at it like that, it's like it doesn't really make sense from a cognitive standpoint, emotionally for sure, because we don't like pain. We don't like discomfort. And just understanding that power, that push-pull that we have when it comes to injuries, when it comes to this relationship with working out. So to be straight up, working out is generally extremely safe when done at the level and the ability that is appropriate for the individual. What is being marketed and sold is typically for a certain avatar. And it might seem enticing to you, but you might actually not be the right person for it. And here's the funny thing: exercise rarely causes the injury. It is, it is rare that the inflammation response is because of the actual exercise itself. What the exercise does, it reveals something that was already there, already developing, because it then stresses the tissues a little bit more, it flames it, and then it's like, ooh, everything guards and tights. Typically, the injury and something like that is an adaptation that has taken years of time to develop, whether that's due to our lifestyle, what we do each day in history as well. Again, we have what we call acute and chronic injuries. So chronic is ongoing. Acute would be like I drop a weight on my foot. Clearly, the weight that caused the break of my foot. There's no denying that there wasn't a bad sleep pattern, or because I was wearing new shoes, that it caused the weakening of the bones in my feet. No, the weight that collided to the earth and my foot was in between weight and earth, that was the result of that. But rarely is a muscle tightening as this or that, a this specific exercise caused that. No, typically it is underlying there, and it was just enough stress that it caused the body to guard and light up a little bit. So again, this is what happens quite a bit. We start working out, we're feeling good, and boom, something happens, and we're like, nope, this isn't good. This isn't good for me. And then you drop everything and we slide all the way back to square one if we're lucky. So there is this constant trap of we push too hard, we get hurt, we get frustrated, and then we stop working out. I'm excited, I'm feeling good, I push, push, push, push, push. Injury, I drop out. The other side of this is we go too cautiously. So we're feeling good, we're moving, awesome. You know, maybe the coach that you're working with or yourself you're working with is going at an appropriate level, but then all of a sudden you're just like, wait a minute, I don't feel challenged. Maybe my my results have kind of plateaued. And then you're like, well, I'm bored. And so there's this constant push-pull of I don't want to work out so hard, I get injured and I stop. And I need to continue to remember my why or to see some slight progress and a safe pace that allows me to feel motivated to continue to do the thing. So at the end of the day, both lead to quitting. As so many things in life, as we learned from sweet, sweet Goldilocks, there is a middle that's typically the happy medium. At least when it comes to exercise, my overall life philosophy is not that, but neither here nor there. So,

Why Stopping Backfires

SPEAKER_00 5:09

why stopping is never the answer? I would say it is rarely ever the answer. And in the clients that I work with and the people that I see on a day-to-day basis, I think movement is life as we know. If the blood stops moving, we are not moving uh much longer. If the heart stops moving, if you know the brain stops firing, movement is life, it's energy, is that kinetic uh spirit, and that that is the same. So here's the fun thing that most people don't realize, and I'll continue to beat this is the body doesn't keep what we're not using. And it's very, very true when it comes to the body. If you don't use it, you lose it. Understand what the body thinks. The body is all about conservation. It's about keeping you safe. It's about keeping the body, the organs, the brain safe. That's why if you look at the body construction, we have a thick skull around our brain that's very important to the body, takes up a lot of energy. We have a rib cage, a lot of muscle and fat around our important organs like our heart, our lung, all of that. And you notice we have less so around our limbs. The body doesn't care as much about those. And muscle burns calories. And so if we're working out, we're staying active, that muscle is keeping us strong. It's improving our posture, our energy, allowing us to do the things we want to do. But when we stop working out, we stop moving, we stop challenging ourselves, the body says this is taking away calories. Calories that can be hidden towards the brain or used on a rainy day where we might be, you know, have no food for a very long period of time. And I want to make sure that I can keep our organs going. And so what it does is what's one of the first things? Well, muscle. It starts degrading the muscle away so that it can conserve calories. And what does that do? Of course, it increases our instability, it increases our susceptibility to injury, less resilient, less able to recover. And then also limits our ability and capacity to function in day-to-day life again. So stopping is typically almost, almost always, never the solution. It is a simple fix-all of that hurts, stop. It's always context. Was the doctor saying stop all movement, stop everything? Or hey, let's just stop irritating that area and let's let it rest. Okay, that's a totally different thing of this stopping all together on that end. So understanding everyone's recovery looks different. No two injuries are the same, no two people respond the same way. What matters is keeping the goal in sight, even when the path looks different for a while. You know, the season might be hey, I have to really focus on, you know, upper body movements right now, a lot of stability to stabilize my core so it's not bothering my lower back. It might be maybe up, I have an upper extremity issue, so I need to focus on the lower body right now. Maybe I can't do as much impact. So I'm doing more just walks. Maybe I'm doing some incline work. So there's a bunch of different ways to continue to keep progressing forward towards your goal without stopping, because stopping puts you way back behind.

Aging, Ego, And Smarter Training

SPEAKER_00 8:22

So right now in my season of life, and this is why it came up to me, is I constantly do this thing where I do something stupid and I hurt myself. The benefit of me is, and I and I joke, but I'm serious, is just because I injure myself, I'm I'm not gonna stop moving. Like I know that about me. I will do, I would say, dumber things than what I would advise my clients to do because I know for a matter of fact, if I'm able to do something and move, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna I'm gonna move. And so I can't guarantee that with the people I work with because I'm not you. And so again, the goal is to never cause injury. The goal is to avoid it at all costs because we don't know how that person's gonna respond to it. And so understandably what happens when we do have an injury, something comes up, whether it's because of life, we slipped and fell, whether it's because we slept weird, we have a lot of stress going on in our life, and it just showed up in the musculature of guarding and tightness locking down. We the goal is to find a way to keep moving. And so, using me as a as a uh case study, I guess, or whatnot, you know, I at this point in my life, I guess you can say late ish 30s, is the uh, you know, my body doesn't heal as quickly when I do something dumb. You know, my it used to be like a day. I'd be like, ow, I'll wake up the next day, you know, shake it out. I was like, maybe I mean I could still work out, call good. Now it's like, oh, I'm gonna be, you know, sore for like two weeks, and I have to like grab the roof of my truck to lift me out of my vehicle to get to get out. And so it's it's different, but what's odd is is continuing to find ways to move. Okay, my workouts aren't the same. They're not full body. They're they're mostly upper body right now. I can't run right now, so I do a lot of walking. You know, I know sitting is exacerbates this, so I try to do a lot as much as possible uh while walking or standing. And you know, doing all those little things to still continue to move and stay active and find movement that feels good with it while continuing to maintain my strength, while continuing to maintain my cardiovascular. And then also at the end of the day, I'm not letting it spiral my nutrition and my goals right now of just getting healthier body compositionally. And so it what it does is it I don't stop what I'm doing. I shift the focus for what makes sense for my body right now. And so that's where a coach comes in, an expert comes in to really help with that. One of the big things is getting smart with aging, um, as I just stated, I am not great at this. I know what to do. I know what is smart to do. And that is as a coach, is great. But that doesn't mean we always listen to it. And so we have to understand that the version of myself that was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, enjoy that version. Hopefully you enjoyed that time. I enjoyed the capacity that I had then. I enjoyed those memories that I did, I accomplished that. No one is taking that away from you. But the goal shouldn't be to be that person again. It should be who you are and where you're going to now in that journey. And what that looks like with working out is especially, you know, if you've been working out a lot, it doesn't look the same as it did. Now, if you're new to working out, well, great. This is your baseline. But but typically what it might look like is, you know, especially for me, is like I might get competitive, I might see somebody and compete internally, like, oh, I want to do that, da-da-da. I'm gonna hurt myself. And it's it's realizing always keeping what is the goal? What is my goal? My goal is to not feel like this, it's to be able to play with my kids, get up and down, like, and not, you know, take three movements to get up. It's to be able to run, it's to be able to twist, rotate, do all those things, and not have to really think about it. And so an injury kind of resets, okay, what are my priorities? And, you know, what why do I keep doing this? And what it's checking my ego at the door, though not easy, because pain is a great reminder of things not to do. And when it's gone, well, why not do it? So, what does this look like for

How Coaches Modify Workouts

SPEAKER_00 12:24

you? What does it look like for a client? So, when a client comes in through our doors, what we are always doing, we are meeting and checking in with each one of our clients as they work out. We know that our clients typically come in before, like every client we work with, I say has an ache pain or something like that. And so it's it's it's no surprise. Oh, my wrist hurts today, my shoulders feeling off, I slept weird, you know, I tripped and fell and I caught myself, so my my wrist is sprained again or an elbow. And so the thing is, is it's it's the goal is to never stop and to know that when you're working with a professional, that they're able to adapt. It's not about just running through what they had planned for the day, but it's adapting. Workouts is always a meeting of you with the coach. It's here's what I had planned, because this is what's best for you based off the goals that you came in with. This is where you were trying to get to. Now that might change as well, but what I had planned for you based off what you said to me today, whether it's your recovery, your attitude, your your how your body is feeling, that's gonna that's gonna adjust. Sometimes it's the entire movement pattern that's gonna adjust. And then sometimes it's just the load and intensity at which we do it. Sometimes it's the stability of what how we do it. Um, sometimes it's the range of motion at what we do it. There's a bunch of different ways to modify it to keep you continually getting stronger and going forward. But I would say rarely ever is the case of just completely stopping. I know sometimes it's it's hard. We are, even as we get older, we're very, very all or nothing. Either I do everything or I do nothing. And the reality is that's the same mindset that led us to where we're at today. It's either if I can't do the whole thing, why bother at all? And the reality is that's just gonna slide you further and further away from your goal. And the other flip side of looking at it is like clients that have put six months, eight months of work into it, realizing that six weeks off of strength training, your body will start taking that away. It does not stay stagnant and it will take it away a lot faster than how you gained it. And so the goal is to never just be like, I worked out for a season of my life, I felt really good, and then I slide back and then keep this yo-yo in, which is common. And I I honestly look at it as a a waste of time and investment. It's you know, we only have so many heartbeats, we only have so many moments in time, and I want to make them those the best. That's why I work out. But at the end of the day, too, is if I've decided to invest in that, and then I know if I stop for a long period of time, again, six weeks isn't nothing, but a period of time with where I'm I'm doing nothing, I'm gonna lose that investment. It's like I just threw that time out. And so, depending how you look at it, never stop moving.

Doctors, PT, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Always keep going forward. Work with a professional. Of course, you want to work with your doctor, of course you want to. There is times where it makes sense to work with a physical therapy on imbalances, it makes sense to work with a doctor because you need muscle relaxants or pain management. And of course, it makes time dream we might have to go surgery and get joints repaired and this and that because we've lived a long active life and things break down and things weren't always optimal. So they're they all have their place in time, but movement in that energy is always the topmost. So again, hopefully this speaks to y'all. If you're a client, awesome. Keep going, work with us. We're always here, never stop going. At the same time, if you're new, you're you're nervous. Yeah. You know, this is why it's important to work with a professional that understands the whole scope, that also works with a team, and has a network of other uh health professionals in their back pocket as well to work alongside you as you go on your fitness journey. That is why we are the fitness sherpa, in the sense that we are guiding you along your path, your journey alongside you. So, have a great day. Thank you all so much. Ta ta for now.