🧠Understanding Pain 

🔔 Pain Is an Alarm System. Not Always a Damage Signal.

 “Pain = Alarm” vs. “Tissue Damage = Injury”

Pain is designed to protect you, not punish you.
Sometimes, that alarm system becomes extra sensitive and it starts going off too early or too loudly, even when there’s no damage.

This sensitivity is common when pain has been around for a while. The good news? That sensitivity can be retrained and tissues can be made more durable!

Pain is real, but it doesn’t always mean there is serious tissue or structural damage. 

⚙️ Why Pain Can Persist

Pain can hang around longer than expected for many reasons:

• 🔄 Your nervous system learned to protect. The longer pain lasts, the better your body gets at producing it.

• 😮‍💨 Stress or worry: These increase sensitivity, like turning up the alarm volume. This can be work stress, life stress.. any kind of stress.

• 💤 Poor sleep: The body and brain are less resilient when under-rested. Sleep is also where our body restores itself. So any efforts being made with strength and mobility are ultimately supported by adequate sleep.

• 💪 Deconditioning: Avoiding movement can make tissues less tolerant over time.

• 🏃‍♂️Overtraining: Too much of anything, even if it's good for us, can eventually be... not so good. For example, it's ok if there is some pain/discomfort while running or lifting but you shouldn't constantly push through. Sticking to a plan, and consistently, will be something we work on together. This is all a balance. I'm here to help take the guess work out of it all.
  
  

• 💬 Beliefs about pain: If you fear that pain equals damage, your body stays in “protect” mode longer.

🏃‍♀️ Movement Helps Calm the System

One of the best ways to calm a sensitive alarm system is to move... gradually and confidently.

Gentle, repeated movement sends your body the message:

“I’m safe. I can move. This isn’t dangerous.”

That’s why we focus on movements that reduce your symptoms and restore your confidence in what your body can do.

Another way I like to think of this is "Sore, but Safe."

I am going to teach you all the ins and outs on how to retrain your system!

🔄 What You Can Expect as We Work Together

You’ll learn to:

• Recognize when pain is just sensitivity, not injury

• Use movement to calm symptoms

• Understand what flare-ups really mean (see What to Expect: Healing page)

• Build trust in your body again

• How to apply this to running, lifting and moving the way that you want to
• You'll learn how to apply the pain-monitoring model. I'm not one for pain scales but this particular model has been used in research and is one of the best ways you can measure response to movement. We are considering how you feel BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER any type of movement. This could be running, strength, mobility, or walking up and down stairs.