Does Stillness Exist?

We live in a world that rarely slows down. The hum of traffic, the buzz of our phones, the constant scroll of information—motion seems to define modern life. Even when we sit quietly, our thoughts keep racing, our hearts keep beating, our cells keep firing. Which raises an interesting question: does stillness actually exist?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. A rock lying on the ground is still. A room in the early morning before anyone wakes feels still. A held breath, a long pause, a frozen moment—these are experiences of stillness. But if we look closer, science, philosophy, and practice all suggest something more nuanced. True stillness may be elusive, yet it remains one of the most valuable states we can cultivate.

The Physics of Motion: Nothing Is Ever Truly Still

From the perspective of physics, absolute stillness is an illusion. Even the objects that appear motionless to our eyes are anything but static.

At the atomic level, every particle vibrates. Electrons swirl in probability clouds, protons and neutrons shift within nuclei, and energy ripples through the quantum field. That rock lying motionless on the ground? Its molecules are buzzing with motion. Its atoms hum with vibrations at unfathomable frequencies.

Zoom out, and the same is true. Our planet spins on its axis at over 1,000 miles per hour, orbits the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, and hurtles through the galaxy at half a million miles per hour. To stand “still” is really just to move in unison with the Earth’s great whirl.

On a cosmic scale, even space itself is expanding. There is no fixed point of reference—no absolute stillness anywhere. What we call “rest” is only relative, defined by comparison to something else that appears to move faster.

From this lens, the universe answers our question clearly: no, stillness doesn’t exist in a literal, physical sense.

The Human Perception of Stillness

And yet, we experience stillness every day. How?

The human nervous system filters reality into something usable. We don’t notice the atomic vibrations or the planet’s spin. What we notice is what changes in relation to us. A car zipping past. A tree swaying in the wind. A breath entering and leaving the body. When change slows down enough—or becomes imperceptible—we call it stillness.

This is why a mountain lake at dawn feels still, even though water molecules are vibrating, the Earth is spinning, and our bodies are buzzing with cellular activity. Our perception of stillness is relative: it’s the absence of noticeable change in a given frame of reference.

In this sense, stillness does exist—not as an objective condition, but as a subjective experience.

The Philosophical Meaning of Stillness

Philosophy and contemplative traditions expand this idea even further. Stillness is not just about the absence of motion; it’s about the quality of being.

Stoics spoke of stillness as inner calm, the ability to remain steady in the face of life’s turbulence. Taoist philosophy describes stillness as harmony with the natural flow, a space where we stop striving and begin aligning. Buddhist practice often centers around cultivating “quiet mind” through meditation—not to freeze thought, but to stop clinging to it.

In these traditions, stillness is not passive. It is not inertness or stagnation. Instead, it is a living presence—a pause that allows awareness, clarity, and deeper connection to emerge. To be still is to step outside the constant swirl of reaction and find the ground beneath it.

The Paradox of Motion and Stillness

Here’s where it gets interesting: stillness and motion aren’t opposites. They exist together. You cannot recognize stillness without knowing motion, and motion is defined only in contrast to stillness.

Think of a snow globe. Shake it, and the flakes swirl chaotically. Let it sit, and the flakes slowly settle to the bottom. The water inside is never completely motionless, but the settling creates a sense of stillness. Our minds work the same way. Thoughts swirl, emotions shake, and eventually, with time and attention, things settle.

Stillness is not the absence of movement but the balance within it.

Cultivating Stillness in Daily Life

If stillness isn’t absolute, why does it matter? Because in our restless, overstimulated world, stillness is a resource—one we are losing, but desperately need.

Here are a few ways to practice stillness:

1. Breath Awareness

The breath is a rhythm we can tune into anytime. Try noticing the quiet space at the end of an exhale, the micro-stillness before the next inhale begins. That pause, however brief, is a gateway into stillness.

2. Intentional Pauses

Between activities, insert a deliberate pause. Before opening your phone. Before answering an email. Before speaking. These tiny spaces become anchors of stillness in the flow of the day.

3. Nature Immersion

Step into environments that embody stillness—early morning woods, a calm lake, a quiet snowfall. Let your senses absorb the slower rhythms. The nervous system entrains to the environment.

4. Movement as Stillness

Paradoxically, stillness can emerge from mindful movement. Practices like yoga, Tai Chi, or even walking meditation use gentle motion to cultivate inner quiet. It’s less about freezing the body and more about harmonizing with its natural flow.

5. Mental Rest

Stillness of the mind doesn’t mean shutting thoughts off. It means watching them without chasing. Meditation, journaling, or simply sitting without distraction can invite this quality.

6. Sleep

Sleep, too, is a powerful form of mental stillness. While the brain remains active in cycles of repair and memory consolidation, the surrender of conscious control creates a unique pause. Each night offers a natural reset—a daily reminder that rest is as essential to clarity as effort.

Why Stillness Matters

In a culture that worships productivity and motion, stillness is radical. It restores nervous system balance, sharpens focus, and deepens creativity. It interrupts the endless chase for the next thing and brings us back to presence.

On a deeper level, stillness reveals that we are more than our activity. Beneath the racing thoughts and constant motion, there is a steady awareness. Call it consciousness, call it presence, call it soul—whatever the word, it doesn’t move. It simply is.

When we touch stillness, we touch that part of ourselves that isn’t swept away by circumstances. That’s why stillness, even if it doesn’t exist as a physical absolute, is one of the most real and transformative experiences available to us.

Closing Thought

So, does stillness exist? Physically, no. Everything is in motion, from the smallest particle to the largest galaxy. But perceptually, experientially, and spiritually—yes. Stillness exists as a state we can cultivate, a perspective we can adopt, and a practice that can change how we live.

Perhaps the truest answer is this: stillness exists wherever we choose to find it. In the pause between breaths. In the gap between thoughts. In the quiet presence we carry, even while the world keeps spinning.

Going Light Doesn’t Mean Easy

For many, the phrase ‘go light’ gets interpreted as ‘take it easy.
Culturally, we’ve been conditioned to equate heavy lifting with hard work and lighter lifting with gentle or recovery work. But that assumption is misguided.

Heavy lifting is one way to work hard. Lighter lifting, done with intention, can be just as challenging — sometimes even more so. By going lighter, you can:

• Move faster and train velocity.

• Explore greater ranges of motion and challenge end ranges.

• Promote muscular endurance and repeatability.

• Accumulate enough tension and time-under-load to stimulate hypertrophy.

The key is not the number on the bar, but what you do with it.

If you choose to go light, you need a plan for where the challenge will come from. Otherwise, you risk exercising for the sake of movement, but not training in a way that meaningfully advances strength, speed, or resilience. Let’s break down why going light doesn’t mean going easy, and how to maximize the value of lighter training days.

The Relationship Between Range of Motion and Force Production

To understand why lighter doesn’t mean easy, we need to revisit a fundamental concept in muscle physiology: the length–tension relationship.

Muscles produce force based on how much their actin and myosin filaments overlap.

• At very short lengths (fully shortened), there’s too much overlap and cross-bridges interfere. Force drops.

• At very long lengths (fully stretched), there’s too little overlap and not enough cross-bridges can form. Force drops.

• In the middle range, there’s an optimal amount of overlap. Force production is maximal.

This relationship has a huge implication for training: when you move through full ranges of motion, you are often training your muscles at their weakest points.

Think of a deep squat. In the bottom position, the deeper you go, the more your quads and glutes are lengthened and the less able they are to produce force. In that position, even a relatively light load can feel heavy. By contrast, in a quarter-squat the muscles remain closer to a mid-range position, where they are better able to generate force.

This illustrates that heavy and light are always relative — not absolute. A load that feels light in one range of motion may feel crushing in another. What we call “light” or “heavy” depends on the muscle length and position being trained.

So when you go lighter but use the full range, you’re actually making the load heavy relative to those weaker, lengthened positions. That’s not easier. It’s simply a different expression of difficulty, tied to position and muscle length rather than just the number on the bar.

Velocity-Based Training: Power Over Poundage

Another dimension where lighter can be harder is velocity. Strength is just one variable of training. Power and speed are others. By nature, when a load is heavier you cannot move it as fast. So we can either keep adding load and accept slower movement, or we can intentionally use velocity as a variable to be manipulated.

That’s the basis of velocity-based training (VBT). Instead of measuring progress only by the weight on the bar, VBT tracks the speed of the lift.

• Very heavy loads tend to move slowly, even if you apply max effort. This allows for maximal force production.

• Moderate to light loads can be moved explosively, promoting power (force × velocity).

This relationship is often described by the force–velocity curve. On one end of the curve, you have very heavy loads that produce high force but low velocity — think of a near-maximal deadlift that moves slowly despite your full effort. On the other end, you have very light loads or even unloaded movements that produce high velocity but low force — like a sprint or jump. In between lies the sweet spot for power development, where moderate loads allow you to produce both significant force and high speed. Training across this curve — sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes explosive — ensures you’re developing strength, speed, and power as complementary qualities.

For athletes, power often matters as much as, or sometimes more than, pure strength. Sprinting, jumping, striking, cutting — these are all high-velocity actions. It would be difficult to train effectively if you only grind slow reps at maximal loads.

By intentionally going lighter, you can focus on moving faster, accelerating harder, and producing power. The bar speed becomes the challenge, not the bar weight.

Think of a loaded jump squat with 25% bodyweight versus a slow back squat with 85%. Both have value. But only the lighter jump squat lets you train rapid force expression.

So lighter isn’t easier. It just stresses a different — and equally vital — quality.

Here, intention really matters. Regardless of the load, the goal has to be moving faster, and there needs to be some metric for what “faster” means. That can come from technology like velocity monitors (such as Tendo units, GymAware, or bar-speed trackers), or it can be as simple as tracking more reps in a set amount of time, or performing the same reps in less time. It’s not just about getting the reps in — it’s about training the intent to move with speed. That intent improves with practice and with proper feedback, making velocity a skill to be developed just like strength.

Slowing Reps Down: Time Under Tension as a Training Variable

The other side of the coin from training velocity is slowing reps down. This can include all four phases of a lift — the eccentric, the hold after the eccentric, the concentric, and the hold after the concentric. By deliberately extending time in each phase, you turn a lighter load into a much more demanding stimulus:

• Slow eccentric (the lowering phase) → extends time-under-tension and challenges muscular endurance. You can also create more force in the muscles during the lowering than the lifting phase, which means you can control more load and explore more challenging ranges of motion during a slow eccentric than during the concentric phase.

• Hold after the eccentric (the pause at the bottom of the lift) → demands stability and control in lengthened positions.

• Slow concentric (the lifting phase) → builds patience and strength through sticking points.

• Hold after the concentric (the pause at the top of the lift) → reinforces stability and full control at lockout.

Consider a push-up. Lowering over 5 seconds, pausing just above the floor, pressing up over 3 seconds, and holding fully extended for 2 seconds (5-1-3-2) creates a completely different challenge than simply moving quickly. Slowing down targets endurance, control, and resilience. It also allows you to get more out of each set with fewer reps.

Slowing down also magnifies awareness. When you spend more time in each phase of a lift, you become acutely aware of where you feel stable versus where you hesitate or compensate. These sticking points often reveal underlying mobility restrictions, coordination gaps, or simply areas your nervous system hasn’t yet learned to trust. Exploring these positions under control — rather than rushing past them — gives you the chance to build confidence and capacity where you need it most.

Lighter Loads and Joint Mobility: Accessing New Positions

Beyond strength and power, lighter loads also open doors in mobility and positional training.

Heavier weights naturally bias the body toward compression: the spine stiffens, joints approximate, and muscles co-contract to create internal pressure. This is great for force production, but it also limits relative motion between joints.

Lighter loads, on the other hand, allow you to access joint angles that simply wouldn’t be possible — or safe — under heavy loading. With less demand for maximal internal pressure, you can direct your breath more precisely and explore variability in movement. This makes it possible to:

• Move deeper into positions without fear of collapse.

• Unlock mobility in areas that heavy loading tends to restrict.

• Coordinate breath and position to create more space in targeted joints.

For example, a heavy barbell bench press compresses the ribcage and shoulders. But a lighter alternating dumbbell press, performed with a long reach and slight upper trunk rotation, can expand the ribcage and promote greater shoulder range of motion.

Although light, these exercises shouldn’t feel easy — just more focused. The challenge will come from increased demands of range of motion, manipulation of tempo, and precise breath coordination to restore motion in areas that are currently limited. This should still feel like work — just a different kind of work.

If you feel chronically stiff or restricted, lighter loads can still support strength and hypertrophy goals while simultaneously promoting better joint mobility and movement options.

Hypertrophy and Endurance

A common misconception is that hypertrophy (muscle growth) requires heavy lifting. In truth, research shows that loads as light as 30% of 1-rep max can stimulate hypertrophy — provided you go close to failure.

Lighter loads, performed for higher reps or slower tempos, keep muscles working longer. This sustained effort builds fatigue, drives motor unit recruitment, and sparks growth. The same principle applies to endurance. Light loads done for long sets improve your ability to sustain contractions, resist fatigue, and repeat efforts.

So when used intentionally, lighter training can make muscles not just bigger, but more enduring.

Part of the reason lighter work can still stimulate growth lies in how different muscle fibers respond to training. Type I fibers (slow-twitch) are more fatigue-resistant and have greater mitochondrial density, making them especially suited for endurance work and long-duration tension. Type II fibers (fast-twitch) are more powerful and better suited for high-force, high-velocity actions. Both fiber types, however, are capable of hypertrophy when trained appropriately, and both contain mitochondria — with Type I fibers generally having a higher mitochondrial density than Type II fibers.

When you use lighter loads for higher reps, you increase the demand on Type I fibers while still recruiting Type II fibers as fatigue accumulates. Conversely, heavier loads tap into Type II fibers earlier and limit activity in the Type I fibers.

In this way, lighter training not only supports hypertrophy but also promotes endurance, mitochondrial function, and the recruitment of a broader spectrum of muscle fibers.

Why Intention Matters More Than Load

At this point, the theme should be clear: light isn’t easy unless you make it easy.

If you go light without a plan you may just spinning your wheels. You’re moving, sure. But there’s a difference between movement for maintenance and training for adaptation.

This is often where using lighter loads falls short. It’s easy to grab weights, go through the motions, and call it a day — but without intention, valuable opportunities for adaptation can be missed. Too often, going lighter is framed as simply being safer. But there’s nothing inherently safe about being unprepared — you can go heavy and be safe, and you can go light and still get injured. What matters is matching your training to your intention. Heavier loads allow for certain adaptations, and lighter loads allow for others. Problems arise when you use light weights as if they were heavy weights — that mismatch of intention undermines the purpose of the training.

So if you choose to go lighter have a plan. A plan for speed, mobility, endurance, etc.

When you do, light becomes powerful.

The Bigger Picture: Heavy vs. Light Is a False Dichotomy

The truth is, the heavy vs. light debate misses the point. Both have value. Both build qualities you need. Both can be abused if programmed poorly.

• Heavy promotes the ability to generate high levels of force. It creates demands on your nervous system that lighter loads can’t, building strength, resilience, and the ability to build structural integrity and full-body coordination through increasing resistance.

• Light gives you other options. It allows you to build speed, power, range, variability, and repeatability.

Both are positive and complementary qualities, and together they create a more complete training profile.

The question isn’t heavy or light. It’s what adaptation are you chasing today?

Final thoughts

Going light does not mean going easy. It only means that you’ve shifted the variable of difficulty away from load and onto something else:

• Range of motion

• Velocity

• Time under tension

• Endurance

The weight on the bar is just one dial. When you go lighter, you open up a dozen others.

Light training is often dismissed as “easy,” but lighter can allow you to go longer, move faster, and get deeper. It can drive hypertrophy, endurance, and mobility. It can sharpen precision, develop patience, and build power.

When guided by purpose, light training offers a new perspective on fitness instead of a retreat from it.

References

1. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res. 2017;31(12):3508–3523.

2. Morton RW, Oikawa SY, Wavell CG, Mazara N, McGlory C, Quadrilatero J, Baechler BL, Baker SK, Phillips SM. Neither load nor systemic hormones determine resistance training-mediated hypertrophy or strength gains in resistance-trained young men. J Appl Physiol. 2016;121(1):129–138.

Just Send Love.

The Power of a Simple Slogan

Few slogans have carried as much cultural weight as Nike’s Just Do It. Three short words turned into a global call to action, stripping away hesitation, excuses, and overthinking. The brilliance of the phrase lies in its simplicity: when in doubt, move. Take the shot, lace up your shoes, run the mile. Action clears the fog of indecision.

Now imagine a companion slogan with similar punch but a different target. One that doesn’t push us to lift weights or crush goals, but instead primes us for how we meet people, stress, and the world itself. That slogan is:

Just Send Love.

Like Just Do It, it is not a judgment, nor a sentimental platitude. It is a strategy. It is active, not passive; strong, not weak. To send love is not to roll over or to ignore hard truths. It is to prime your nervous system and your mind to show up in the best possible way.

Why Love?

We live in a world saturated with competing strategies for self-improvement: toughness, grit, productivity hacks, resilience training. All valuable in their context, but often delivered with an undertone of “push through the pain” or “suppress your feelings.”

But here’s the thing: anger, resentment, jealousy, frustration, and anxiety all feel terrible. They lock us into narrow perspectives. They close doors instead of opening them. They may have their evolutionary value in short bursts, but as chronic states, they make us less effective, less compassionate, and less connected.

Love, on the other hand, feels good. And because it feels good, it’s also practical. When you send love—even silently, internally—to the person you’re nervous to meet, to the person who cut you off in traffic, or to the colleague who frustrates you, you immediately change your internal state. You shift from constriction to openness. That shift doesn’t guarantee the outcome you want, but it puts you in a better place to navigate whatever comes next.

Beyond Resistance

We are told constantly to “push through” resistance. Go to the gym even when you don’t feel like it. Wake up early even when you want to sleep in. Have the tough conversation even if it terrifies you. And yes, discipline matters.

Resistance often shows up most fiercely around the very things we want to do. We want to exercise, but dread the effort. We want to eat well, but crave the shortcut. We want to write, but fear the blank page. The instinct is to fight resistance with more resistance—pushing, forcing, muscling through. But there is another way. Instead of fighting, notice the resistance and send it love. Ask yourself, what do I find hard about this? Then send love directly to that difficulty. Love doesn’t deny the challenge, but it removes fear’s grip. With exercise, for example, sending love to the ache, the fatigue, or the insecurity takes away the power they hold. Fear contracts; love expands. And in expansion, resistance loses its teeth.

Sending Love Is an Active Practice

It’s easy to dismiss “just send love” as corny, soft, or unrealistic. But sending love is not about sentimentality—it’s about effectiveness. It changes the state you’re in, right now. Love steadies your breath, softens your body, and widens your perspective. It takes the sharp edge off defensiveness and opens the door to clarity.

When you’re about to walk into a difficult conversation, sending resentment or dread primes you to defend. Sending love primes you to connect. When you’re angry, adding more anger only escalates. Sending love de-escalates—not by pretending the problem doesn’t exist, but by giving you the composure to address it without poisoning yourself.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes practice. At first, sending love may feel awkward or forced, almost like you’re going through the motions. But the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. With repetition, love begins to take you out of yourself. It broadens your view. It shifts your perspective from “me versus them” to “we.” Love doesn’t erase conflict, but practiced consistently, it equips you to meet conflict without losing your center—and to connect more deeply with the people around you.

Sending Becomes Feeling

At first, sending love may feel silly. You pause, breathe, and deliberately choose to direct love toward someone or something. It can feel awkward, artificial, even contrived. But that’s how all training begins. Repetition is what reshapes us. Over time, the act of sending starts to dissolve into the direct experience of love itself. What once felt like effort becomes ease. The more you practice, the more genuine warmth arises on its own. Eventually, you stop thinking of it as something you do and begin experiencing it as something you are. This is the real transformation: the practice of sending love evolves into the lived feeling of love.

Metta Practice: love training

In Buddhist traditions, the deliberate cultivation of love is formalized as metta or “loving-kindness” meditation. The practice is simple, but profound:

1. Sit quietly and breathe.

2. Begin by sending phrases of goodwill to yourself: May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be at peace.

3. Expand outward: to a loved one, a neutral person, even a difficult person. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be at peace.

4. Expand further still: to all beings everywhere.

What’s radical about metta practice is that it’s not based on who “deserves” your love. The difficult person—the one who frustrates or angers you—gets the same wish as your dearest friend. Not because you excuse their behavior, but because you refuse to let their behavior corrupt your inner state.

It is resilience that draws its power from compassion. It is training the muscle of love the way you train biceps or lungs.

The Reports Are Consistent: Love Is All There Is

Across traditions, across cultures, across altered states of consciousness, a single theme repeats:

Love is the fundamental reality.

• Mystics have said it for centuries. “God is love,” wrote the apostle John.

• Sufi poets like Rumi equated love with the very fabric of existence.

• Yogic traditions frame the heart as the seat of union, compassion, and liberation.

• Psychedelic research reports again and again that at the height of mystical experiences, participants feel “overwhelmed by unconditional love.” People emerge from sessions declaring that love is not just an emotion but the essence of reality itself.

Whether or not you subscribe to religion or altered-state exploration, the message is strikingly consistent: love is not optional fluff. It is the deepest thread holding us together.

Love by Other Names

Sometimes “love” feels too loaded. It conjures romance, sentimentality, or unrealistic ideals. But love has many doorways all leading to the same place:

• Gratitude – the deliberate act of appreciating what you already have.

• Kindness – the disposition to act in ways that promote the flourishing and well-being of others.

• Acceptance – the ability to meet reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

• Compassion –the recognition of another’s suffering as bound up with one’s own humanity.

Each of these states produces a similar shift as love: a move from constriction to openness, from resistance to receptivity. They are love wearing different faces.

The Science of State

Modern science backs what spiritual traditions have long said. When you send love—or gratitude, kindness, or compassion—you trigger measurable changes:

• Increased oxytocin (the bonding hormone).

• Reduced cortisol (the stress hormone).

• Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the fight-or-flight response.

• Strengthening of neural circuits associated with empathy and perspective-taking.

These are not abstract ideals. They are chemical, neurological realities. When you send love, your biology shifts. And that shift primes you for clearer decisions, better relationships, and greater resilience.

The “Corniness” Problem

Let’s address it outright: yes, this can sound corny. In a culture that prizes toughness, stoicism, and irony, speaking openly about love can feel vulnerable, even embarrassing.

But here’s the paradox: the very act of leaning into that vulnerability is what makes it powerful. To send love is to risk sincerity in a world that hides behind sarcasm. It is to choose strength not by armoring up, but by opening up.

If the practice feels corny, that’s okay. Instead of getting stuck on appearances, ask the simple question: is it useful? If sending love brings calm, clarity, or connection, then it’s serving its purpose. And even the vulnerability you feel in that moment—the awkwardness, the self-consciousness—can itself be met with love. Send love to the part of you that feels exposed. In doing so, the very thing that felt corny becomes another doorway back to love.

Love in Action

To “just send love” does not stop at intention. It spills into behavior:

• In conversation: by listening fully instead of rehearsing your counterargument.

• In conflict: by addressing the problem without dehumanizing the person.

• In leadership: by creating an environment where people feel valued and empowered.

• In self-care: by choosing rest, nourishment, and movement out of self-respect rather than punishment.

Love translates into simple shifts: a softening of tone, a pause before reacting, a willingness to smile. Over time, these subtleties scale into cultures—families, teams, and communities where trust outweighs fear.

Concrete Examples

To make this practical, imagine moments of everyday life:

• Worried about your children? Just send them love. Instead of spiraling in fear, you anchor yourself in care and connection. Love doesn’t erase the worry, but it transforms it into something that strengthens you rather than weakens you.

• As a movement professional: We can get so focused on diagnosing, prescribing, and correcting that we forget the most fundamental thing—caring. Instead of dwelling on what a client needs to change, just send them love. It doesn’t replace technique or science, but it infuses both with humanity.

• In relationships: Instead of rehearsing how to win the argument, send love to the person across from you. The tone of the conversation will shift instantly.

• In self-care: Instead of berating yourself for falling short, send love to the part of you that’s tired, scared, or struggling. That compassion fuels forward momentum far better than self-criticism ever could.

Love is not a replacement for action—it’s the ground on which effective action stands.

You Will Fail

You will fail. Not because you’re weak, but because you’re human. This is not a practice of moral perfection—it’s a practice of faith. Faith that when things are hard, love will never let you down. Love is always there, waiting, whenever you choose to tap back into it. And yes, you will forget. You will get caught in anger, swallowed by fear, or distracted by resentment. That forgetting is inevitable. The work is simply to return. To train your mindfulness so that you come back to love as often as you can—without judgment. Because judgment only tries to hold love down, to smother it under shame. Love doesn’t require anything from you. It doesn’t measure, compare, or demand perfection—it simply waits for you to notice it.

The Final Word

Nike taught us that hesitation kills momentum. Just Do It cut through analysis paralysis and made action the baseline.

Just Send Love is its sibling strategy. It cuts through emotional paralysis and makes openness the baseline. Not because it’s noble, but because it’s practical. Love feels good. Love primes you for clarity. Love connects you to others and to yourself.

We don’t have to wait for mystical experiences, religious revelation, or psychedelic journeys to glimpse it. The direct experience of love is available here, now, at the cost of a single choice.

Yes, it may feel corny. But corny is nothing compared to the weight of carrying resentment, fear, and anger.

And remember—you will fail, you will forget, but that’s part of the practice. Each time you return, you strengthen the habit. With repetition, sending love becomes less about trying and more about being. It stops feeling like a strategy you pull out in hard times and starts becoming the ground you walk on.

So try it. Practice it. Return to it again and again. Because love is always waiting.

Just Send Love.

References:

Oxytocin & Bonding

• Carter, C. S. (2014). Oxytocin pathways and the evolution of human behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 17–39.

• Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 61(3), 380–391.

Cortisol Reduction

• Pace, T. W. W., et al. (2009). Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 34(1), 87–98.

• Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848.

Parasympathetic Activation (Calming the Nervous System)

• Kok, B. E., et al. (2013). How positive emotions build physical health: Perceived positive social connections account for the upward spiral between positive emotions and vagal tone. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1123–1132.

• Fredrickson, B. L., et al. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1045–1062.

The Myth of the Root Cause: Why Chasing a Single Fix Holds Us Back

Introduction: A Noble but Misguided Search

One of the most admirable qualities I see in movement professionals—whether they are physical therapists, chiropractors, personal trainers, or coaches—is the desire to go deeper than surface-level symptom management. They want to move beyond “just rub where it hurts” or “just ice the swollen joint.” They want to understand how the whole system interacts, how posture, breathing, gait, strength, and environment play together.

That instinct is right. It reflects curiosity, compassion, and a refusal to reduce human beings to pain charts and pill prescriptions.

But in this noble pursuit, many fall into a seductive trap: the myth of the root cause. The idea that somewhere in your body—if we only dig deep enough, test enough, release enough, strengthen enough—we’ll uncover a single switch that explains everything. And once we flip that switch, you’ll be “fixed.”

On the surface, this message feels empowering. In reality, it sets up a false expectation that undermines growth, creates dependence on the professional, and presents an unrealistic picture of how complex systems—like the human body—actually work.

What We Mean by “Root Cause”

In health and fitness, “root cause” usually refers to the idea that symptoms in one area (say, knee pain) originate from dysfunction elsewhere (say, hip weakness, poor ankle mobility, or even breathing mechanics). Instead of chasing pain, the professional says, “Let’s find the root.”

This sounds more sophisticated than just treating symptoms, and in some cases, it’s partially true. Your knee pain may indeed be influenced by your hip strength or your gait pattern. But when we elevate this into a single cause–single cure model, we risk making complex systems appear simpler than they are.

The reality is:

• Multiple factors always contribute.

• The same symptom in two people rarely shares the exact same “cause.”

• What looks like a cause in one context may be an effect in another.

• The human body is not a car with one broken part—it’s an adaptive, evolving ecosystem.

Why the Root Cause Narrative Persists

If this approach oversimplifies reality, why do so many professionals use it? Several reasons:

1. It makes us look smart. Identifying a hidden link—“your shoulder pain actually comes from your ribcage”—sounds insightful. It gives the impression we’re seeing what others missed.

2. It sells hope. Telling someone, “We’ve found the cause” creates a sense of certainty and reassurance in a situation often defined by fear and confusion.

3. It creates dependency. If the professional is the one who can uncover your “real” problem, you need them to interpret and treat it. That dynamic can be good for business, even if unintentionally.

4. It’s psychologically satisfying. Both professionals and clients like clean stories. Humans crave cause-and-effect explanations, even when the truth is far messier.

The Hidden Problem: It’s Still Chasing Pain

Many movement professionals pride themselves on not chasing pain. Instead of rubbing the sore spot, they look elsewhere. But chasing a “root cause” is just another form of chasing—just with more elaborate reasoning.

Instead of asking, “How can we help you move better, build resilience, and grow over time?” we ask, “Where is the hidden culprit we can fix?”

It’s still a fix-it mindset. It still assumes that once we solve “the thing,” all will be well. And that’s rarely how recovery—or human development—works.

The Illusion of Certainty

One of the most damaging side effects of the root cause myth is that it presents certainty where none exists.

“The problem is your left glute isn’t firing.”
“Your diaphragm is stuck.”
“Your pelvis is rotated forward.”
“Your jaw is driving your shoulder pain.”

These statements sound authoritative, but they often reduce a multidimensional problem to a single mechanism. They give the professional confidence and the client comfort—but both are illusions.

Because what happens when the “fix” doesn’t fix?

• The client feels broken: “If that wasn’t the cause, maybe I’m unfixable.”

• The professional doubles down: “We just haven’t found the real root cause yet.”

• The cycle continues, reinforcing dependency and disappointment.

Complexity Isn’t a Bug—It’s the System

The human body is not broken for being complex; it is designed that way. Redundancy, variability, and adaptability are features, not flaws.

Think of movement like an orchestra. If one instrument is slightly out of tune, the performance doesn’t collapse. Other instruments compensate. Sometimes compensation becomes dysfunctional, but often it’s what keeps us going.

To say “your problem is coming from X” misses the point. It may contribute, but the body is more like a web than a chain. Tugging one strand changes tension across the entire net, but no single strand explains the whole structure.

The Trap of Professional Heroism

For movement professionals, chasing the root cause can easily morph into professional heroism: “I’m the one who finally figured out what’s wrong with you.”

This is seductive. It positions the professional as the savior and the client as the rescued. But it robs the client of agency.

Instead of empowering someone to engage in a process of exploration, strength building, and adaptation, it keeps them waiting for the expert to solve the puzzle. This delays the very growth we claim to promote.

A Process-Oriented Alternative

So, what’s the alternative? If we abandon the hunt for root causes, are we just left treating symptoms and shrugging at complexity? Not at all.

The alternative is a process-oriented mindset—one rooted in growth, learning, and resilience. This means:

1. Shifting from causes to contributors. Instead of “the root cause is your hip,” we say, “Your hip strength may be one of several contributors. Let’s train it while also addressing other factors.”

2. Valuing adaptability over fixes. The goal isn’t to “fix” the body back to some ideal state but to expand your capacity to handle variability.

3. Making uncertainty explicit. Instead of pretending we have certainty, we can say, “There are multiple possibilities. We’ll experiment, see how your body responds, and adjust.”

4. Emphasizing skill development. Rehab isn’t just about tissue healing; it’s about building new skills of awareness, movement, strength, and recovery.

5. Restoring agency. The client isn’t a puzzle to be solved but an active learner in their own process.

The Risk of Storytelling Gone Wrong

Humans love stories. Professionals who identify a root cause are telling a compelling story: “This one thing explains your pain.”

But good stories can be dangerous if they’re not true. Clients walk away repeating the narrative: “My pelvis is rotated, and that’s why I can’t run.” Years later, they still cling to it—even if their pelvis is no longer rotated, even if that was never the full picture.

We must be careful. The stories we tell can liberate people or trap them.

Complexity as a Growth Opportunity

Instead of fearing complexity, we can reframe it as an opportunity. Complexity means there is always another way forward. If one strategy doesn’t work, we can try another. If one pattern breaks down, another can be built.

This mindset doesn’t give us the comfort of certainty, but it gives us the strength of adaptability. And adaptability is far more protective than any single fix.

Where Integration Matters

Now, let’s be clear: the integrated nature of the body does matter. Breathing affects posture, which affects gait. Foot position affects knee loading, which affects hip torque. The nervous system constantly coordinates these relationships.

But acknowledging integration isn’t the same as proclaiming a root cause. Integration means we have to respect complexity—not collapse it into a single origin story.

When professionals say, “Your shoulder pain comes from your diaphragm,” they’re not wrong to see connections. They’re wrong to stop there, as if the body can be reduced to a neat diagram.

The False Security of Fixes

One of the most overlooked problems with the root cause myth is that it fosters a false sense of security.

Clients may believe: “Once my pelvis is aligned, I’ll never hurt again.”
But then pain returns, and they feel betrayed—by their body, by their professional, by the whole process.

Pain, dysfunction, and limitation are not signs of failure. They are part of living in a complex, adaptive system. They are invitations to keep learning and adjusting. Framing them as “the root cause wasn’t really fixed” misses the larger lesson: there is no finish line, only ongoing growth.

Reclaiming the Role of the Professional

If not to find root causes, what is the role of the movement professional? I would argue:

• Be a guide, not a savior. We are here to guide clients through uncertainty, not to deliver certainty we don’t actually have.

• Be a coach, not a mechanic. The body isn’t a broken machine to be repaired but a living system to be trained and supported.

• Be a teacher, not an oracle. Our value lies in teaching skills and perspectives, not proclaiming diagnoses.

When we embrace this role, we stop pretending to know the unknowable and start fostering true resilience.

The Courage to Say “I Don’t Know”

Perhaps the most radical—and empowering—thing a professional can say is: “I don’t know for sure, but let’s explore together.”

This shifts the dynamic. Instead of dependence on an expert’s secret knowledge, the client sees themselves as an active partner. Together, you build experiments, observe outcomes, and refine.

Uncertainty is not weakness. It is honesty. And it is the foundation of authentic learning.

Moving Beyond the Root Cause Myth

To summarize:

• The search for a root cause is well-intentioned but misguided.

• It replaces symptom chasing with fix chasing.

• It fosters false certainty and client dependence.

• It oversimplifies a system that is inherently complex.

• It distracts us from the real opportunity: process-oriented growth.

When we stop looking for the root cause, we don’t abandon people to their pain. We invite them into a richer, more resilient process of becoming. We empower them not with answers, but with agency.

Conclusion: Trading Illusions for Agency

The myth of the root cause persists because it is seductive. It promises clarity where life offers complexity, fixes where life requires growth, and certainty where life demands adaptability.

But when we cling to that myth, we rob ourselves and our clients of something far greater: the chance to embrace the messy, beautiful process of learning and evolving.

The truth is, there is no root cause waiting to be uncovered. There is only the living process of becoming stronger, more adaptable, and more aware.

As professionals, our highest calling is not to deliver the illusion of certainty but to guide others into this process—where they can reclaim agency, build resilience, and discover that the journey itself is the destination.

The Physiology of Fear: How Your Body Responds to Threat

Fear is one of the most universal human emotions. It has helped our species survive by preparing us to either face danger or flee from it. While fear is often framed as a psychological state, its roots run deep in the physiology of the body. From the firing of specialized neurons to the release of stress hormones, fear reflects a tightly coordinated interplay between brain, body, and environment. Understanding this physiology not only sheds light on why we respond the way we do in threatening situations, but also offers insight into how fear can become maladaptive in conditions such as chronic pain, where the nervous system begins to interpret situations that were previously not threatening as dangerous. As a result, sensitivity expands to include many experiences unrelated to actual tissue damage.

The Brain’s Fear Circuitry

Fear begins in the brain, where sensory information is processed and evaluated for potential danger. Three regions dominate the fear response: the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.

• Amygdala: This almond-shaped cluster of nuclei rapidly processes sensory cues for threat value (LeDoux, 2000). It is hyper-responsive in both fear and chronic pain states, often amplifying perceived threat from otherwise harmless stimuli.

• Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): The ventromedial PFC helps regulate amygdala activity, allowing for more rational reappraisal (“the sharp twinge in my back isn’t catastrophic”). In chronic pain, PFC regulation often falters, leaving the amygdala unchecked (Baliki et al., 2008).

• Hippocampus: This region encodes context. It distinguishes whether a signal of potential danger is relevant or benign. Individuals with chronic pain often show altered hippocampal activity often show altered hippocampal activity, leading to overgeneralization of pain-related fear (Maren et al., 2013).

This triad illustrates how pain and fear intertwine: pain becomes frightening not only because of the sensation itself but because the brain begins to treat ordinary movements or contexts as dangerous.

The Autonomic Nervous System and the “Fight-or-Flight” Response

Once a threat is perceived, the amygdala signals the hypothalamus to activate the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The sympathetic branch prepares the body for immediate action:

• Increased heart rate and blood pressure deliver oxygen to working muscles.

• Pupils dilate, sharpening vision.

• Bronchioles expand, enhancing oxygen intake.

• Blood flow is redirected from the gut to skeletal muscles.

This rapid cascade explains why fearful situations often come with a pounding heart, shortness of breath, or sweating palms.

For those with chronic pain, this same system may become sensitized, amplifying bodily arousal even during routine activity. Climbing stairs or bending to tie a shoe can trigger disproportionate autonomic responses if the nervous system has learned to treat those movements as threatening (Quartana et al., 2009).

The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis and Pain-Related Stress

Beyond the immediate ANS response, the HPA axis provides sustained stress signaling:

1. The hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).

2. CRH triggers the pituitary to secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).

3. ACTH stimulates the adrenal cortex to release cortisol, the body’s chief stress hormone.

Cortisol mobilizes glucose for energy and modulates immune responses. Short-term, this is adaptive. But in chronic fear or pain states, cortisol regulation becomes disrupted, leading to fatigue, inflammation, and impaired tissue recovery (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009). Dysregulated cortisol has been observed in individuals with chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia, and other pain syndromes (McBeth et al., 2007).

The Startle Reflex and Motor Preparation

Fear primes the motor system. The startle reflex, mediated by the brainstem, causes immediate defensive movement (e.g., flinching at a loud sound). When the amygdala is already sensitized, this reflex intensifies.

In chronic pain, movements that previously triggered discomfort can set off similar reflexive guarding: muscles tighten before a feared motion occurs. This anticipatory bracing—though protective in the short term—can reinforce pain through altered biomechanics and sustained muscle tension (Vlaeyen & Linton, 2012).

Fear Learning, Pain Memory, and Avoidance

One of the most powerful aspects of fear physiology is its link to learning and memory. Through fear conditioning, neutral stimuli become paired with threat. For example:

• In experimental models, a tone paired with a shock comes to elicit fear responses.

• In chronic pain, bending forward once during an acute episode can condition the nervous system to treat all future bending as threatening, even when there is no ongoing injury.

The amygdala encodes these associations, the hippocampus contextualizes them, and the PFC attempts to extinguish them when they are no longer valid (Maren & Holmes, 2016). In chronic pain, extinction learning often fails, meaning the nervous system continues to link ordinary movements with danger.

This ‘fear-avoidance model’ of chronic pain explains why individuals may stop moving, exercising, or even socializing, reinforcing disability and perpetuating the pain cycle (Vlaeyen & Linton, 2000).

Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Fear

From an evolutionary perspective, fear is protective: it heightens vigilance, primes muscles, and helps us survive. But in chronic pain, fear physiology can become maladaptive.

• Hypervigilance: Constant scanning for bodily threat increases pain perception.

• Avoidance: Reduced movement leads to deconditioning, stiffness, and further pain, by reshaping neural and connective tissues toward a more pain-sensitive state.

• Neuroplastic Changes: Persistent fear-pain coupling strengthens maladaptive neural pathways in the amygdala and PFC.

• Systemic Effects: Prolonged HPA activation disrupts sleep, mood, and immune function, compounding pain experience.

In short, the nervous system expands its definition of threat, pulling in sensations and situations that were previously neutral.

Rethinking Fear in Pain Rehabilitation

A deeper understanding of the physiology of fear has reshaped modern pain rehabilitation. Approaches such as graded exposure therapy gradually reintroduce feared movements, teaching the nervous system that these actions are safe. One of the most powerful and practical forms of graded exposure is progressive physical conditioning—using strength training, aerobic activity, and mobility work to rebuild trust in the body while expanding capacity. Mind-body practices, including mindfulness and breathing techniques, further help recalibrate autonomic and HPA axis responses, creating a nervous system that is less reactive and more adaptable. Together, these strategies build confidence, resilience, and freedom from fear-driven avoidance.

Crucially, the goal is not to eliminate fear—it is to retrain its physiology so it supports higher function and better quality of life, rather than remaining locked in overgeneralized sensitivity.

Conclusion

Fear is not “just in the head”—it is a whole-body state orchestrated by neural, autonomic, and hormonal systems. In acute danger, this physiology is lifesaving. But when the same circuitry becomes entangled with chronic pain, fear responses can spread to situations that are not actually dangerous, driving avoidance, disability, and suffering.

Recognizing the physiology of fear in chronic pain reframes treatment: it is not only about addressing tissues, but about calming the amygdala, strengthening the prefrontal cortex, retraining learned associations, and restoring trust in the body’s capacity to move without danger. Ultimately, this is a multidisciplinary process—not a quick fix. Rarely will a single medicine, surgery, or exercise solve the problem. Instead, it requires consistently showing yourself that you are less fragile than you think. This resilience is earned over time, through steady practice, progressive conditioning, and appropriate guidance.

References

• Baliki, M. N., Geha, P. Y., Apkarian, A. V., & Chialvo, D. R. (2008). Beyond feeling: chronic pain hurts the brain, disrupting the default-mode network dynamics. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(6), 1398–1403.

• LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155–184.

• Maren, S., Phan, K. L., & Liberzon, I. (2013). The contextual brain: implications for fear conditioning, extinction and psychopathology. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(6), 417–428.

• Maren, S., & Holmes, A. (2016). Stress and fear extinction. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(1), 58–79.

• McBeth, J., Silman, A. J., Gupta, A., Chiu, Y. H., Ray, D., Morriss, R., Dickens, C. (2007). Moderation of psychological risk factors through dysfunction of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal stress axis in chronic widespread pain. Arthritis & Rheumatology, 52(10), 3124–3132.

• Quartana, P. J., Campbell, C. M., & Edwards, R. R. (2009). Pain catastrophizing: a critical review. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 9(5), 745–758.

• Ulrich-Lai, Y. M., & Herman, J. P. (2009). Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 397–409.

• Vlaeyen, J. W. S., & Linton, S. J. (2000). Fear-avoidance and its consequences in chronic musculoskeletal pain: a state of the art. Pain, 85(3), 317–332.

• Vlaeyen, J. W. S., & Linton, S. J. (2012). Fear-avoidance model of chronic musculoskeletal pain: 12 years on. Pain, 153(6), 1144–1147.

Direct Experience: Bridging Movement Science and Eastern Wisdom

We live in a culture obsessed with intermediaries. Coaches translate sport into drills. Teachers translate reality into curriculum. Therapists translate experience into models and diagrams. Even our own minds translate the raw present into stories, judgments, and categories.

But what happens when we bypass the translator? What happens when we experience the world directly?

This question lies at the heart of two very different traditions: the ecological approach to learning in psychology and motor skill acquisition, and the direct experience traditions of Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and other contemplative paths. Though born of different histories—one from modern cognitive science, the other from ancient spiritual practice—they converge on a radical idea: reality is directly available to us, if we can learn to stop inserting barriers.

In this post, I’ll explore the parallels between these worlds. Along the way, we’ll see how they challenge conventional views of learning, perception, and awareness—and how they might inform not just movement training, but life itself.

The Ecological Approach: Information Is Already in the World

In the mid-20th century, psychologist James J. Gibson disrupted the dominant paradigm of perception. At the time, most theories assumed that perception was an indirect process: the eyes captured a chaotic array of light, which the brain then interpreted and reconstructed into something meaningful.

Gibson rejected this view. He argued that the world is not ambiguous chaos, but already structured in meaningful ways. Perception, then, is direct. We don’t need to construct reality from scratch; instead, we pick up information already available in the environment.

This information is organized into affordances—action possibilities that the environment offers a particular organism. A chair affords sitting for a human, but not for an ant. A ledge affords jumping for a cat, but not for a turtle. Perception is not about representing a detached world inside the head, but about detecting the actionable invitations present in our immediate surroundings.

The ecological approach thus places emphasis on perception-action coupling: learning emerges not from abstract knowledge but from engaging directly with the environment in a goal-directed way.

The Direct Approach to Skill Learning: Removing the Middleman

Building on Gibson, modern motor learning theorists like Karl Newell and Rob Gray developed the direct approach (often embodied in the constraints-led approach). Instead of breaking down skills into decontextualized drills and then hoping the brain will later assemble them, the direct approach designs environments where the skill itself can emerge.

For example, rather than practicing a basketball free throw by isolating arm mechanics, the direct approach might vary task constraints (distance, ball size, fatigue) so that the learner adapts in context. The goal is not to impose an idealized movement pattern but to allow the body to explore degeneracy—multiple ways to achieve the same functional outcome.

The emphasis is on self-organization: the nervous system finds stable solutions through direct experience with the problem, not through verbal instruction or internal models.

In short, the direct approach says: learning is not in the coach’s words, nor in the player’s abstract representation—it is in the ongoing, lived relationship between person and environment.

Taoism and Buddhism: The Direct Path of Awareness

Long before Gibson, Taoist sages and Buddhist teachers asked similar questions about perception—though not of basketball or affordances, but of the nature of reality itself.

The Tao Te Ching opens with the line: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” Words and concepts are not the thing itself. Reality, or Tao, is immediate, self-existing, and cannot be grasped through description.

Zen Buddhism echoes this with its famous emphasis on direct pointing. A teacher may say: “Look directly at the sound of the rain. Where is the boundary between you and it?” The instruction bypasses intellectual analysis, aiming to provoke an immediate recognition of non-dual awareness.

Meditative traditions stress the same: thoughts and interpretations are after-the-fact overlays. Awareness itself is always already present, requiring no construction. Just as ecological psychology argues perception is direct, Buddhism argues that enlightenment—or awakening—is not an attainment of new content but a recognition of what has always been here.

four parallels

When we look across science, coaching, and contemplative traditions, striking echoes appear. Each begins in a different domain—psychology, skill learning, spiritual practice—but they converge on a shared intuition: reality is not something we construct secondhand. Instead, it is encountered directly, organized and sufficient on its own terms. From here, we can trace four core parallels that highlight this common ground.

Parallel 1: No Mediator Required

The first and clearest parallel is the rejection of mediation.

• In cognitive psychology, perception was thought to require an internal intermediary—a brain-based reconstruction of reality. Gibson said: Perception is direct.

• In traditional coaching, learning is thought to require stepwise drills and instructions. The direct approach says: Skill emerges directly from experience in context.

• In religion and philosophy, truth is often mediated by scriptures, rituals, and dogma. Taoism and Zen say: Awareness is directly accessible, here and now.

In all three domains, the radical claim is that reality is already structured, already sufficient. The mediator often obscures more than it reveals.

Parallel 2: Trust in Self-Organization

A second parallel is the belief in self-organization.

• In ecological psychology, the perceptual system self-organizes to detect affordances.

• In motor learning, the athlete self-organizes movement solutions when exposed to rich task constraints.

• In Taoism and Zen, the mind naturally rests in awareness when we stop interfering; meditation is less about striving and more about non-doing.

The teacher’s role in all three traditions is not to dictate outcomes but to craft conditions where the natural intelligence of the system reveals itself.

Parallel 3: Variability Is Not Error, but Freedom

Traditional learning models often treat variability as noise, something to be eliminated. But ecological psychology and Taoist philosophy both invert this idea.

• In motor learning, variability is exploration. Trying multiple ways of moving helps find adaptable, resilient solutions.

• In Taoism, the world is in constant flux—the Tao flows like water, never rigid. To live skillfully is to move with variability, not against it.

• In Zen practice, thoughts and feelings come and go like clouds. Variability of mind is not an error, but part of the unfolding of awareness.

In each case, variability signals freedom—the ability to adapt to changing circumstances without clinging to one rigid solution.

Parallel 4: The Untranslatable Nature of Truth

Both scientists and sages warn us: direct experience cannot be fully transmitted through words.

• Gibson said that affordances are picked up through perception, not through verbal description.

• Coaches in the direct approach design practice environments, because words alone can’t teach the skill.

• Zen masters famously hold up a flower or shout a single syllable instead of giving lectures—pointing beyond words.

Language, at best, is a pointer. The truth must be experienced.

A Deeper Integration: Awareness as the Ultimate Affordance

Now, let’s push further. What happens when we don’t just see these parallels as interesting coincidences, but as part of a deeper integration?

One possibility is this: awareness itself is the ultimate affordance.

Think about it. The environment offers actions to the body. But what allows us to notice affordances at all? Awareness. Without awareness, no affordance can be perceived. Awareness is the condition for direct perception.

In Taoism and Zen, awareness is not something we generate—it is the ever-present field in which all affordances arise. When we rest in awareness, life becomes less about managing representations and more about responding directly to what is.

From this perspective, ecological psychology and Buddhism are not just parallel—they are nested. The ecological approach explains how the organism engages directly with its environment. The contemplative traditions explain the deeper ground in which both organism and environment are revealed: awareness itself.

Practical Implications: From Sports to Daily Life

Why does this matter beyond theory?

1. For coaches and therapists: We can design learning environments that trust the intelligence of the system, minimizing unnecessary instruction and maximizing direct experience. Instead of over-explaining, we let the athlete discover.

2. For contemplatives and everyday people: We can approach life less as something to be mediated by constant thinking and more as something to be directly lived. Instead of analyzing every moment, we rest in the immediacy of awareness.

3. For bridging science and spirituality: Recognizing these parallels dissolves the false dichotomy between rigorous psychology and mystical insight. Both are studying the same phenomenon: the possibility of meeting reality directly.

Common Objections and Distinctions

Of course, we must be careful not to flatten differences.

• Ecological psychology is empirical and behavioral, concerned with measurable interactions. Taoism and Zen are existential and ontological, concerned with the nature of being.

• Direct motor learning is about performance optimization. Buddhism is about liberation from suffering.

• Words like “direct” mean slightly different things in each tradition.

Yet, the resonance is real. The ecological approach says: “Perception is of affordances, not internal representations.” Zen says: “Awareness is of reality as it is, not of mental stories.” Both dismantle the tyranny of intermediaries and invite us back to immediacy.

Living the Direct Path

Ultimately, the lesson across domains is simple but challenging:

• Stop adding layers.

• Trust direct contact.

• Let experience teach you.

When an athlete feels the ball instead of rehearsing cues, they are on the direct path.
When a therapist guides a patient into exploring their environment rather than memorizing postures, they are on the direct path.
When a meditator listens to the rain without commentary, they are on the direct path.

Directness does not mean simplicity or ease. It means dropping the illusion that reality needs translation before it can be lived.

Conclusion: One River, Many Streams

The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu once wrote: “The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap.”

The ecological psychologist might say the same about models. The coach might say the same about drills. The Zen master might say the same about sutras.

In the end, all of these are traps meant to catch the fish of direct experience. Once caught, the trap can be discarded.

What remains? The river itself. Flowing, dynamic, unmediated. The direct experience of life—whether on the basketball court, in the clinic, or on the meditation cushion.

And perhaps that is the deepest lesson across science and spirituality alike: learning and awakening are not about acquiring something new, but about remembering how to meet what is already here.

Recommended Reading & Resources

Ecological Psychology and Direct Learning

• James J. Gibson – The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception

• Rob Gray – How We Learn to Move

• Keith Davids, Chris Button, & Simon Bennett – Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach

Taoism and Buddhism

• Laozi – Tao Te Ching (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

• Zhuangzi – The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

• D.T. Suzuki – Essays in Zen Buddhism

• Alan Watts – The Way of Zen

Bridging Science and Awareness

• Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, & Eleanor Rosch – The Embodied Mind

• Jon Kabat-Zinn – Wherever You Go, There You Are

• Shaun Gallagher – How the Body Shapes the Mind

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Let People Mess Up: Why Movement Mastery Comes from Variability, Not Perfection

In the world of physical training—whether in the weight room, on the field, or in the rehab clinic—it’s tempting to coach as if perfection is the goal. We often have an image in our head of the “right” squat, the “right” running stride, or the “right” way to throw a ball. We give cues, corrections, and feedback until what we see matches that picture. And while there’s nothing wrong with having standards, there’s a hidden danger here: if we overcoach, we rob people of the chance to explore, adapt, and actually own their movement.

Perfection is an illusion. Movement is a practice—an evolving dialogue between a person’s body and their environment. There is no single, universal “right way” to move. There are only constraints, intentions, and an infinite number of expressions that can fulfill them.

If you want to help someone truly master movement—not just mimic a shape—you have to let them mess up.

Invariants vs. Variability: The Two Pillars of Movement

In motor learning, there’s a valuable concept called invariants—the aspects of a movement or skill that should remain stable across variations. These are the “must-haves” for effectiveness and safety. Everything else can—and should—shift based on context.

For example, in a deadlift:

• An invariant is keeping the load close to the body to reduce unnecessary torque on the spine and hips, and literally make the weight feel lighter.

• Another is controlling the weight through the full range of motion without losing position in a way that compromises the lift’s intention.

But the rest—stance width, hip height, torso angle, grip style—can vary depending on limb length, mobility, fatigue, equipment, or even the surface you’re lifting on.

This principle can be even broader and beyond the specifics of any one movement:

• In general physical conditioning, one invariant is progressive adaptation—gradually being able to tolerate more work without breaking down.

• In strength training, it can be force production—your ability to produce high levels of tension to move load.

• In endurance, it may be the ability to go longer—cover more distance or sustain effort over time.

• And across all training, the ultimate invariant is progress—moving toward greater capacity, resilience, and adaptability over time.

When coaches confuse invariants with fixed techniques, they stifle variability, which is the very quality that makes movement robust and transferable.

Why Overcoaching Holds People Back

Overcoaching usually comes from good intentions. We want to protect clients from injury, help them succeed faster, or mold them into a technically “clean” mover. But here’s the paradox: if we never let them explore the edges of their ability, they’ll never truly own their movement.

In skill acquisition research, self-organization is critical. When learners explore movement solutions themselves, they form deeper motor patterns that are more adaptable under pressure. Constantly cueing them robs them of this process.

Think about learning to ride a bike:

• If someone is holding the seat and correcting every wobble, you can “look” like you’re riding… until the hand lets go.

• The real learning comes when you have to manage those wobbles yourself—maybe even fall once or twice—because that’s when your brain starts refining balance strategies.

The same applies to lifting, sprinting, throwing, or rehabbing after injury. Without some space to struggle and experiment, the skill never becomes truly resilient.

Scaling Intention, Not Enforcing a Shape

The best way to create space for exploration while still keeping things safe and productive is to design systems that scale difficulty to the client’s readiness.

A skilled coach doesn’t just say, “Do this exactly like this.” They say, “Here’s the intention. Let’s find a version that meets you where you are today.”

Examples:

• If a client struggles to keep a kettlebell close to their body during a hip hinge, start them with a shorter range and lighter load before progressing to heavier weights from the floor.

• If a runner is returning from injury, adjust terrain, pace, and volume to match their current tolerance, gradually introducing more challenging conditions.

The point is not to protect them from all challenge. It’s to set them up with the minimum effective constraints that allow them to explore safely. Over time, you can peel those constraints back, increasing variability and complexity.

Variability is the Path to Mastery

In movement science, variability isn’t chaos—it’s adaptability. Skilled movers have a wide “solution space” for any given intention.

Think of elite basketball players:

• They can shoot a jumper from a perfect square-up position.

• But they can also hit the same shot fading away, off one foot, or with a hand in their face.
  The invariant is the ball’s trajectory to the hoop. The variability is the countless ways they can achieve that trajectory depending on the situation.

Research on professional athletes supports this: those who have multiple motor solutions for the same outcome perform better under variable, unpredictable conditions. Golfers with multiple swing strategies can adapt to wind and course conditions. Soccer players with more passing and shooting variations can exploit more opportunities.

The same applies to everyday athletes and rehab clients. The more ways they can achieve a desired intention—while maintaining their key invariants—the more resilient they are in real life.

The Individual and Environment Are Never Separate

One of the biggest reasons to embrace variability is that the individual and the environment are inseparable in movement.

The way you move depends on:

• Your body’s current state (strength, fatigue, pain, flexibility, coordination)

• The task at hand (lifting a sandbag vs. a barbell, cutting on turf vs. hardwood)

• The environment (hot vs. cold, wet vs. dry, loud vs. quiet, crowded vs. empty)

You cannot control all of these variables in real life, so why train as if you can?

If you want your clients—or yourself—to be adaptable, you need to train in a way that reflects this reality. That means sometimes changing the surface, the implement, the tempo, or the level of fatigue. It means accepting that no two reps will be exactly the same.

Safety is Contextual, Not Absolute

One of the reasons coaches overcorrect is because of safety concerns. But here’s the truth: safety is not an objective state—it’s a perception filtered through experience.

What feels safe for one client may feel terrifying for another. Asking someone to lunge onto a high box might be fine for an experienced athlete but overwhelming for a post-op knee patient.

Instead of imposing your personal sense of safety, ask:

• “What about this feels safe to you?”

• “What feels risky?”

• “What could make this feel safer while still challenging you?”

This creates a collaborative environment where safety is co-constructed, not dictated. It also helps clients take ownership of their progress, which builds both confidence and skill.

Practical Ways to Let People Mess Up

1. Define the Intention First
   Instead of cueing a position, cue an outcome: “Get the ball to the target,” “Land quietly,” or “Keep the weight close to your body.”

2. Highlight the Invariants
   Make sure clients know the few non-negotiables—things that should remain consistent no matter the variation.

3. Allow Exploration
   Give them space to try different approaches. Resist the urge to jump in after every rep.

4. Scale Constraints, Not Options
   Adjust the task difficulty so they can explore within a safe challenge zone.

5. Change the Environment
   Vary surfaces, implements, speeds, and levels of fatigue to encourage adaptability.

6. Collaborate on Safety
   Ask clients what feels safe or unsafe, and adjust together.

Case Study: The Squat

Let’s take a simple but often overcoached movement: the squat.

Traditional approach:

• Feet exactly shoulder-width apart

• Toes at a precise angle

• Knees tracking exactly over toes

• Chest at a fixed position

Variability-friendly approach:

• Invariants: The tempo is controlled, the feet stay grounded, the hips remain lower than the shoulders, the movement feels safe.

• Variability: Stance width, foot angle, torso lean, tempo, and depth can all shift depending on the day, the load, the goal, and the athlete’s comfort.

This approach acknowledges that different stances might be more stable for different anthropometrics, that fatigue might change the most efficient position, and that a change in footwear or surface might require different adjustments.

The Athlete Analogy

Think about a tennis player who can only hit a forehand from one exact position with one exact grip. They might look technically perfect in practice… but in a match, with the ball coming at different speeds and spins, they’re doomed.

Contrast that with a player who can hit a forehand:

• Stepping forward

• Leaning back

• On the run

• At shoulder height or ankle height

The second player is less “perfect” in appearance but infinitely more adaptable. That adaptability is the real marker of skill.

Why This Matters in Rehab

In rehabilitation, variability is even more critical. After an injury, the nervous system is often hypersensitive. People move differently not because they’ve “forgotten” how, but because they’re protecting against perceived threat.

If we overcorrect, we may inadvertently increase that threat perception, reinforcing avoidance patterns. Instead, if we provide multiple safe-feeling options for achieving the same task, we help the nervous system rebuild confidence and expand its solution space.

From Rigid to Resilient

Here’s the bottom line: rigid movement patterns are brittle. They work only in the narrow band of conditions they were built for. The moment the environment changes—or the body changes—they can fail.

Resilient movers have range within their skill. They know the invariants that keep them safe and effective, but they can bend everything else to fit the situation.

To build that resilience, you have to let people mess up. Give them the freedom to explore, to adapt, and yes, to fail sometimes. That’s where the learning lives.

Final Thought

If mastery is the ability to achieve a movement intention in many different ways, then perfection isn’t the goal—adaptability is. The individual and the environment are never separate, so train like they’re connected. Promote variability, co-create safety, and above all, trust the process enough to step back and let people find their own way.

A Personal Renaissance with Bodybuilding

There was a time in my life when bodybuilding was everything.

As a teenager and into my twenties, I was drawn to the iron like a moth to flame. I wanted to be bigger, stronger, and, like most young men, I measured my worth by the plates on the bench press. The goal was simple: more weight, more size. I didn’t think much about how I moved or what I was neglecting. And like many gym bros before me, I skipped leg day more times than I care to admit.

Nutrition? I never connected the dots between the gym and the kitchen. I ate whatever I wanted and never linked it to anything I was doing in the gym—or to how I felt or performed in life. I didn’t understand recovery, volume management, or the importance of movement quality. I trained like what I thought a bodybuilder would train like—but without any real education behind it. The pursuit was purely superficial—ego-driven, lazy, and misguided.

Worshipping “Function”

As I got deeper into my career as a physical therapist and strength coach, my mindset shifted significantly. I came from an athletic background—basketball in my earlier years—and as I transitioned from athlete to clinician, I began to view bodybuilding with a more cynical eye.

Then I discovered CrossFit and the broader world of so-called “functional training,” and it felt like a revelation. For the first time in years, I was moving dynamically, competing again, and feeling athletic. Olympic lifts, gymnastic movements, and timed workouts scratched the competitive itch and gave me purpose beyond aesthetics. It reconnected me with the part of myself that thrived on performance and challenge.

But in embracing this new paradigm, I swung the pendulum too far.

I started to resent bodybuilding—viewing it as outdated, vain, and even counterproductive. It represented a period of my life I had outgrown, or so I thought. “Functional training” became my religion, and hypertrophy work was sacrilegious.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my disdain for bodybuilding was never about the training itself. It was about what it represented in my life. I associated it with immaturity, insecurity, and a lack of knowledge. What I didn’t see was the sophistication and versatility it actually offers when approached with intention.

An Expanded Perspective

In my forties, as I started taking on more athletic pursuits—more CrossFit, more pickup basketball, more BJJ—my body started sending a clear message. Slowly at first. A few warning signs here and there. But eventually I realized what was happening: I wasn’t recovering the way I used to. I was feeling more beat up than built up. There was always some nagging joint irritation or soft tissue flare-up. The accumulation of load without balance was catching up to me.

That’s when bodybuilding reentered the frame—not as a replacement, but as a rediscovery.

What I once dismissed as vanity now revealed itself as utility.
What I once viewed as shallow began to show real depth.
What I once cast aside has become essential—not because it does everything, but because it fills in what other methods often leave out.

The Versatility of Bodybuilding

Of all the benefits bodybuilding brings to the table, perhaps the most valuable is its versatility.

You can go heavy or light, push hard or dial it back. As long as you’re applying appropriate intensity to the target tissue, there’s value. 

For a body in midlife—still active but less forgiving—this flexibility is gold.

Key variables that can be manipulated within bodybuilding include:

• Intensity variations

You can stimulate the same muscle using high-load, low-rep work (e.g. 5×5 squats) or low-load, high-rep protocols (e.g. 3×20 leg extensions). Both can drive growth if intensity is sufficient.

• Exercise Selection

There are countless ways to stimulate a muscle—none inherently better, just different tools for different contexts. You don’t need the perfect movement—you need an entry point that lets you challenge the muscle safely and effectively.

• Tempo & Range of Motion

Bodybuilding emphasizes variations in tempo and range of motion—slowing down a rep, pausing at the bottom, or extending the eccentric phase. These subtle changes shift the demand on the muscle, improve control, and expose weak links. It’s a powerful way to reconnect with areas that have lost coordination, stability, or proprioception. By manipulating how and where tension is applied, you’re not just training muscles—you’re refining movement.

Strengthening Through Stretch: Hypertrophy & Tendon Resilience

Among all the ways bodybuilding demonstrates its versatility, one of the most impactful is its ability to strengthen muscles in lengthened positions. A growing body of peer-reviewed research suggests that training at longer muscle lengths may offer unique hypertrophic benefits compared to training at shorter lengths—even when the overall range of motion is similar.

Recent systematic reviews and experimental studies have consistently shown that exercises emphasizing a stretched muscle position can lead to greater gains in muscle size. This effect has been observed across various muscle groups, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, triceps, and calves, highlighting a potential advantage of incorporating movements that challenge muscles in these lengthened positions.

Why might this work? 

Training at long muscle lengths appears to increase passive tension within the muscle, which may enhance activation of the mTORC1 pathway—a key signaling route associated with muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophic adaptation.

Why is this important? 

The benefits go beyond size. Slowly and deliberately loading a muscle into a stretch—then contracting out of that position—builds resilience at joint angles that are often the most susceptible to strain or injury. Over time, this strategy improves mobility, reinforces control in weak positions, and builds strength where most people are least prepared.

It’s an efficient approach that checks multiple boxes at once: more hypertrophy, more usable range, and greater control in the positions that matter most.

Filling the Gaps

In my clinical experience, staying engaged in familiar athletic pursuits is vital for preserving confidence, identity, and capability with age. But over time, their repetitive demands can create blind spots—neglected areas, overused patterns, or imbalances that limit resilience and long-term progress. Bodybuilding helps fill those gaps by providing controlled, targeted loading that promotes movement variability, joint control, and tissue-specific resilience.

In this way, it hasn’t competed with the activities I love—it’s complemented them. Bodybuilding has given me the tools to sustain those pursuits by shoring up weak points, reinforcing undertrained areas, and supporting recovery without losing momentum. It isn’t a step back—it’s the structure that has allowed me to move forward with more confidence and greater consistency.

The Clinical Lens

Over the past 20 years as a physical therapist, my perspective on fitness has evolved dramatically. Early in my career, I viewed bodybuilding-style training as overly rigid, even harmful—focused too much on aesthetics at the expense of function, and potentially contributing to dysfunctional movement patterns or overuse injuries. But over time that view shifted. I’ve come to recognize bodybuilding as one of the most scalable and adaptable tools in the rehab and performance continuum. When applied with intention, it offers precise, targeted loading that can restore joint control, build tissue resilience, and reinforce movement competency in ways that many other training styles can’t.

Here’s why:

• Muscle Building: Sarcopenia is real. Building and maintaining lean tissue is non-negotiable for healthy aging.

• Injury Workarounds: You can always find a variation that works. Hypertrophy training is incredibly modifiable—angles, tempos, ranges of motion can all be adjusted.

• Body Control & Proprioception: As muscle size and force production increase, contractions become easier to feel and control, enhancing your ability to sense and coordinate movement with greater precision.

• Education on Relative Intensity: One of the main principles of hypertrophy training is helping people safely understand what “hard” actually feels like. It’s much easier—and more effective—to approach true muscular failure in a controlled, targeted setting where the focus stays on the working muscle.

• Progression Frameworks: Whether it’s reps, load, tempo, or rest intervals, bodybuilding provides a structured, measurable path forward.

• Inclusivity of Movements: Unlike more dogmatic systems, bodybuilding allows for value in both complex and simple movements. A well-executed bicep curl can be just as therapeutic as a Turkish get-up, depending on the context.

"And" Not "Or"

In my opinion, one of the reasons bodybuilding is often misunderstood is the tendency to view it in isolation rather than as part of a larger, integrated fitness process. It’s easy to dismiss hypertrophy training when it lacks balance or context—but that’s not a flaw of the method itself, rather a limitation in how it’s applied. Adopting an “and” not “or” mindset allows bodybuilding to complement other training styles, enhancing both performance and longevity.

This isn’t unique to bodybuilding—it applies to any training method.

CrossFit, yoga, Olympic lifting, Pilates—none of them are inherently good or bad. They each offer something unique. But they’re incomplete on their own.

If your only exposure to bodybuilding is chest day, arm day, ego lifting, and mirror selfies, of course it’s going to feel empty. But when you understand its full utility—when you respect the stimulus and the structure—it becomes a powerful tool in a well-rounded practice.

Training and Nutrition: Better Together

Bodybuilding doesn’t just complement nutrition—it demands it.

The relationship between training and nutrition in this context is like peanut butter and jelly, or peas and carrots—they just make more sense together. When you're following a program designed to build your body, it naturally reinforces the behavioral consistency needed to eat with structure and intention.

Personally, I use both the Renaissance Periodization (RP) Hypertrophy and Diet Apps to guide my training and nutrition. The structure of the workouts aligns seamlessly with targeted dietary strategies—creating a feedback loop that supports muscle growth, recovery, and long-term sustainability.

Each rep in the gym creates a stronger reason to hit your protein target, stay hydrated, and prioritize recovery. Likewise, each well-planned meal reinforces your efforts under the bar.

This synergy creates momentum. You're not just working out—you’re building something. And that sense of direction makes it easier to make aligned choices, both in and out of the gym.

Body recomposition requires more than just effort—it requires alignment. And nothing aligns physical change and daily discipline quite like the pairing of hypertrophy training and nutrition done with purpose.

No Graduation—Only Evolution

I used to see myself as someone who had “graduated” from bodybuilding into higher-order movement. But that hierarchy was a myth. There’s no graduation—only evolution.

Now, I see bodybuilding not as a phase to outgrow but as a meaningful component of a more evolved training philosophy.

It’s allowed me to move away from the binary thinking that kept me rigid. Instead of “training like an athlete” or “training like a bodybuilder,” I now ask: What does my body need today? What’s going to move me forward?

Sometimes it’s intensity.

Sometimes it’s isolation.

Often, it’s both.

Closing Thoughts

My return to bodybuilding isn’t about leaving past training philosophies behind—it’s about expanding them. Each phase of my athletic journey has added depth to how I view movement, and bodybuilding has become a key part of that expansion. No longer just a pursuit of size or aesthetics, it now serves a more strategic role: supporting joint integrity, enhancing recovery, and offering a focused way to build resilience where it’s needed most.

Bodybuilding doesn’t check every box—but it’s a powerful tool. One that’s often misunderstood in many training circles. It often gets framed as “not functional,” but at this point, that word has become so vague it’s lost much of its meaning. A better question is: Is it useful? And when applied with intention, it is undeniably useful—for rehab, for performance, and for aging well with strength and confidence.

References:

• Maeo, S., Sakurai, H., Kusagawa, Y., Wu, Y., Huang, M., Sugiyama, T., Kanehisa, H., & Isaka, T. (2022). Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position. → European Journal of Sport Science. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2022.2100279

• Pedrosa, G. F., Simões, M. G., Figueiredo, M. O. C. F., Lacerda, L. T., Schoenfeld, B. J., Lima, F. V., Chagas, M. H., & Diniz, R. C. R. (2023). Training in the initial range of motion promotes greater muscle adaptations than at final in the arm curl. Sports (Basel), 11(2), 39. https://doi.org/10.3390/sports11020039

• Pedrosa, G. F., Simões, M. G., Figueiredo, M. O. C., Lacerda, L. T., Schoenfeld, B. J., Lima, F. V., Chagas, M. H., & Diniz, R. C. R. (2021). Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 121(7), 1787–1799. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33977835/

The Judgment Cycle: How Blame, Guilt, and Shame Keep Us From Changing—and How to Break Free

If you’ve ever tried to make a meaningful change in your health, habits, or mindset, chances are you’ve met the resistance of judgment. It might not look like judgment at first. It might feel like frustration, self-doubt, cynicism, or guilt. But look a little closer, and you’ll find judgment embedded in the way we talk to ourselves, perceive others, and even interpret the world around us.

Judgment is sneaky like that. It disguises itself as insight. It dresses up like motivation. But more often than not, it becomes the very thing that holds us back.

Let’s unpack the cycle of judgment—a loop that traps us in the very behaviors we’re trying to change—and explore how recognizing this cycle is the key to real, lasting transformation.

It Starts with Judgment of Others

When we feel stuck or out of alignment with the version of ourselves we want to be, one of the easiest things to do is point the finger outward.

We judge the people who are doing the things we’re not doing.

• The early riser becomes “obsessive.”

• The meal prepper becomes “neurotic.”

• The person who won’t drink on a Friday night is “no fun.”

• The one training hard into their 60s is “overcompensating.”

This is projection, plain and simple. It’s easier to see discipline as extreme when we’re struggling to find any of it. It’s easier to dismiss consistency as rigid when we’re stuck in a pattern of inconsistency.

Judging others for doing what we say we want to do is the first signal that we’re disconnected from our own capacity for change.

Then Comes Self-Judgment

The second part of the cycle is more subtle—and more painful.

After we judge others for being “too much,” we turn that same harsh gaze inward. We criticize ourselves for not being enough.

We start asking:

• “Why can’t I just stick with it?”

• “Why do I always fall off?”

• “Why am I not that kind of person?”

This judgment masquerades as tough love. But it’s really just self-sabotage. It keeps us fixated on identity—who we think we are or aren’t—rather than behavior—what we actually do or don’t do.

Instead of changing, we ruminate.

Next Comes Judgment of the System

Now that we’ve judged both others and ourselves, it’s only natural to judge the system.

And to be fair, the system deserves scrutiny.

The healthcare system is reactive, not proactive. Most medical advice is fragmented. Insurance often discourages holistic care. Big food, big pharma, and corporate wellness are all profit-driven.

But here's the catch: when we only view the system through a lens of cynicism and helplessness, we fall into external blame. And blame—whether valid or not—further strips us of agency.

We tell ourselves:

• “Of course I can’t get better—look at this broken system.”

• “Of course I’m confused—there’s so much conflicting information.”

• “Of course I’m stuck—it’s not my fault.”

Blame, even when earned, becomes an anchor. It may feel justified, but it doesn’t help us move forward.

Guilt, Shame, and Avoidance Lock Us In

Eventually, this spiral leads to guilt and shame.

• Guilt for not doing what we said we would.

• Shame for feeling like we should be different by now.

• Avoidance because facing it all feels overwhelming.

And here we are—back where we started. Tired. Frustrated. Watching others do what we wish we could do. Judging them. Judging ourselves. Criticizing the whole system. Feeling stuck.

And change? Still out of reach.

The Hidden Cost of the Judgment Cycle

Here’s the cruel irony: the more we judge, the less we change.

Judgment keeps us thinking about change without ever taking the actions required to change. It feels like analysis, but it’s actually paralysis.

And maybe even more damaging—judgment keeps us disconnected from curiosity, which is the foundation of all sustainable transformation.

Breaking the Cycle: Seeing Clearly, Acting Consistently

The way out begins with awareness. You can’t change what you can’t see.

Start by noticing your judgments—not to judge them (that would just be another loop)—but to gently shine a light on them.

• When you feel resistant to someone’s habits, pause and ask: Is this actually about them—or something I want for myself but haven’t figured out how to do yet?

• When you find yourself stuck in self-criticism, ask: What would I do differently right now if I truly believed I could change?

• When you catch yourself blaming the system, ask: What’s still within my control today—even if the system is flawed?

From this place of awareness, something powerful can emerge: acceptance.

Acceptance that:

• You want to change.

• You’re allowed to want to change.

• You’re capable of change.

This might sound simple. But it’s revolutionary.

Many people never fully accept that they can change because they're too busy defending who they currently are. But you can accept yourself and still want to grow. In fact, that’s the sweet spot.

The First Step: Consistency Over Perfection

Change doesn’t come from waiting until everything is perfect. It comes from doing one consistent thing differently—even while the world stays messy.

Forget identity for a moment. Don’t worry if you’re “the kind of person” who tracks meals, trains regularly, or wakes up early.

Instead, ask: What is one action I can take today that moves me closer to where I want to go?

And then… do it again tomorrow.

Consistency doesn’t require confidence. It just requires action.

Final Thought: Judging Less, Doing More

The cycle of judgment is deeply human. It’s how we try to make sense of a world full of contradiction, confusion, and unmet expectations.

But it’s also how we stay stuck.

When we let go of judgment, we gain access to clarity. When we quiet blame, guilt, and shame, we can hear what our body and mind actually need.

And from there—real change becomes possible.

You’re not lazy. You’re not broken. You’re not too late.

You’re just human.

And once you see the cycle, you no longer have to stay in it.

In Defense of the Burpee: From Prone to Powerful with Purpose

Few exercises inspire such passionate opinions—both love and hate—as the burpee. For some, it's a badge of honor, a gritty test of toughness and grit. For others, it's a lazy catch-all programmed by coaches lacking creativity. Few movements have been so widely implemented across fitness landscapes—CrossFit, bootcamps, military training—yet so widely vilified, particularly in elite performance and rehab circles.

One of the most well-known critics is strength coach Mike Boyle, who has called burpees "the most dangerous exercise in the gym" and claimed, “the only reason people use burpees is because they ran out of ideas.” For Boyle, the burpee represents unnecessary spinal flexion, poor movement quality, and mindless fatigue. His criticisms are not without merit—when programmed poorly, the burpee can be an absolute mess.

But that’s the point: like any exercise, the burpee is only as good—or as bad—as its execution and intent. Demonizing the burpee wholesale ignores its foundational value as a skill we should all aspire to maintain—the ability to get from the ground to standing with power, rhythm, and flow.

What Is a Burpee, Really?

Strip away the reps, the speed, the no-pain-no-gain narrative, and what is a burpee? It’s a transition. A journey from the ground (prone) to a vertical stance, potentially with a jump or hop to complete the motion.

In other words, the burpee is a full-body locomotor skill. It’s not just about fitness—it’s about function.

In real life, the ability to move from the floor to standing is a foundational marker of independence. In sports, this sequence is critical: think about a downed athlete getting back into play, or a BJJ practitioner scrambling from bottom to top position. In aging populations, the ability to get off the ground without assistance strongly predicts fall resilience and long-term independence.

So yes, elite athletes might “graduate” from burpees to more specialized movements. And yes, not everyone needs to do high-volume burpees for conditioning. But if you remove ego, what’s left is a movement we should all respect—and protect.

The Problem Isn’t the Burpee. It’s the Programming.

When Boyle and others critique the burpee, their real target is often how it's programmed:

• Done in high volumes with sloppy form? Dangerous.

• Used as a punishment? Counterproductive.

• Thrown into every circuit with no progressions? Lazy coaching.

But none of that is the burpee’s fault.

Poorly programmed squats, deadlifts, or Olympic lifts can also be dangerous and useless. That doesn’t mean we ban the movements—it means we program them better.

The burpee is no different. It’s a movement that demands coaching, scaling, and intention.

The Safe, Progressive Burpee

One of the best things about burpees is how scalable they are. You don’t need to throw your chest to the ground and explode up right away. Here’s how you can progress the movement for almost any body:

1. Elevated Burpee

Instead of going to the floor, use a bench or box. Step back and forward, keeping the spine long and the movement clean. No jump needed.

2. Step-Through vs. Jump-Through

Many people lack the hip mobility or core control to snap their legs forward underneath them. Let them step through first. Jumping can come later.

3. Slow on the Way Down, Fast on the Way Up

Teach control. Moving slowly into the plank or prone position builds awareness and strength. The upward phase can eventually become explosive—but only once the foundation is laid.

4. Power vs. Flow

Burpees can be used to build power—think fast, crisp transitions, a powerful jump, and a sharp landing. Or they can be a rhythmic flow, focusing on breath, coordination, and grace. Both versions are useful, depending on the training goal.

In this way, the burpee becomes a movement practice, not just a conditioning tool. When progressed properly, it’s no more dangerous than a get-up, a squat, or a push-up.

The Ability to Rise Isn’t Universal

One of the reasons burpees get a bad rap is that many of the people programming or critiquing them take for granted the ability to transition off the ground. But not everyone has that luxury.

For someone recovering from injury, building back from illness, or aging with grace, the ability to get down and back up—repeatedly and confidently—can be transformative.

It’s easy to criticize burpees when you’ve been pain-free for decades. But ask someone who has struggled to get off the floor after a fall, or who has felt trapped in their body due to immobility, and you’ll hear something different: getting up is a gift.

By integrating functional floor-to-stand transitions in your training—whether through Turkish get-ups, crawls, or burpees—you’re investing in your capacity to move through the world autonomously.

Burpees might look like punishment to some. But to others, they represent freedom.

When Burpees Belong (and When They Don’t)

Burpees aren't for everyone, and they aren't for every program. Here’s when they can work:

✅ General conditioning for recreational athletes and general population clients
✅ GPP (General Physical Preparedness) phases for athletes
✅ Bodyweight circuits for home workouts or travel
✅ Warm-ups or movement prep, when done with control
✅ Resilience training—building the ability to recover from the ground quickly

But here’s when they don’t make sense:

❌ As punishment
❌ In high-volume circuits for beginners with poor movement capacity
❌ For clients with acute shoulder, wrist, or spinal issues (without proper modifications)
❌ As the default "intensity booster" in lazy program design

Burpees are a tool. A powerful one. But not the only one.

Final Thoughts: Honor the Movement

The burpee may not be trendy, sexy, or biomechanically pristine—but it represents something fundamental. It’s a microcosm of athleticism: core control, mobility, coordination, timing, and intent. It can be a sprint or a dance. It can build work capacity or body awareness.

The fitness world doesn’t need to love burpees. But it should respect them.

Instead of asking whether burpees are “good” or “bad,” ask better questions:

• Is this person ready for the movement?

• What is the desired outcome?

• How can I scale this to build skill and confidence?

If you can go from the floor to standing with ease, speed, and control, you’ve built something worth keeping. And if you’ve ever lost that ability, you know just how precious it is.

Burpees aren’t just a workout. They’re a celebration of your ability to rise.

The Comfort Paradox: Why Discomfort Today Builds Comfort Tomorrow

We live in a world that prizes comfort. From ergonomic chairs to food delivery apps, temperature-controlled environments to on-demand entertainment, modern life is engineered to minimize friction. And while this can be convenient, it also sets a subtle trap—one where we begin to equate comfort with well-being and avoidance of discomfort with wisdom.

But here’s the paradox: the more we pursue comfort in the moment, the more uncomfortable our lives can become in the long term. And inversely, the more we’re willing to lean into discomfort intentionally, the more comfort and freedom we create for ourselves over time. This is the Comfort Paradox.

Introducing the Comfort Continuum

To make sense of this, let’s look at what I call the Comfort Continuum.

On one end of the spectrum is Comfort in the Moment—the impulse to feel good now, to avoid pain, to stay in familiar territory, and to minimize effort.

On the other end is Comfort Through Capacity—the ability to feel at ease because you’ve built the strength, skill, resilience, or understanding to handle what life throws at you.

These two types of comfort are not the same. In fact, they often compete with each other.

• Comfort in the moment is visible, immediate, and gratifying.

• Comfort through capacity is invisible, delayed, and often earned through discomfort.

The key insight? You can’t build comfort through capacity without experiencing discomfort.

The Cost of Chasing Comfort in the Moment

Choosing momentary comfort might feel smart in the short term: resting when you’re tired, avoiding confrontation, skipping the hard workout, taking the escalator instead of the stairs. None of these are inherently bad choices. But over time, when avoiding discomfort becomes a habit, your world begins to shrink.

Pain gets worse. Movement becomes harder. Confidence erodes.

Eventually, the most basic tasks—getting up off the floor, climbing stairs, carrying groceries—start to feel like major obstacles. That’s because comfort in the moment doesn’t build anything. It’s a withdrawal, not a deposit. And when life inevitably demands something of you—be it physical, emotional, or mental—you discover that you haven’t built the capacity to meet it.

That’s the moment when the lack of capacity becomes visible.

You might not notice strength or resilience when someone has it. But you always notice when they don’t.

What Is Comfort Through Capacity?

Comfort through capacity is subtle and slow-building. It’s earned through consistent, often invisible effort.

It’s not about being constantly uncomfortable or grinding yourself into the ground. Rather, it’s about choosing challenges that stretch you—physically, mentally, emotionally—just beyond what’s easy.

• It’s pushing through the last reps of a workout.

• It’s learning a new skill and enduring the awkwardness of being a beginner.

• It’s having the hard conversation instead of staying quiet.

• It’s waking up early for a walk instead of sleeping in every day.

Each of these moments, while uncomfortable, deposits something into your long-term capacity bank. Over time, this builds a body that moves well, a mind that doesn’t panic under pressure, and a life that feels more capable.

This is comfort in its truest sense—not freedom from discomfort, but freedom within it.

The Illusion of Effortless Ease

One of the biggest lies modern culture sells us is that ease should come effortlessly. But that’s not how nature works. Trees grow stronger through wind and pressure. Muscles only develop through resistance. Immune systems are forged through exposure.

Humans are no different. Our capacity for comfort is directly proportional to our willingness to be uncomfortable by choice.

Want to be able to run without pain? You have to train.
Want to lift your kids without tweaking your back? You need strength.
Want to focus deeply on work? You need to practice delaying gratification.
Want to age with grace and capability? You need to move—often and with intention.

Ease is a product of effort, not the absence of it.

Discomfort as a Signal, Not a Stop Sign

Discomfort isn’t something to fear. It’s information. It tells you where you’re growing, what you’re avoiding, and where the edges of your current capacity lie.

The trick is distinguishing between productive discomfort and destructive pain. Not all discomfort is worth pursuing—but far more of it is useful than we’re conditioned to believe.

In a training context, discomfort is where adaptation happens. The muscle burns a little, the breath gets heavy, coordination is challenged—and the body says, “Ah, we need to get better at this.”

Avoid that signal often enough, and the body assumes it doesn’t need to be ready for much.

Capacity Is Invisible—Until It Isn’t

Capacity doesn’t show up on a scale or in a mirror. It doesn’t come with instant gratification. But it makes everything easier—getting out of a chair, chasing your kids, walking all day in a new city, returning to work after injury.

Capacity often goes unnoticed—until you lose it.

This is why so many people don’t train for capacity until a crisis forces them to. Pain, injury, illness, or limitation jolts them into action. But by then, you’re playing catch-up.

What if, instead, we lived with the awareness that capacity is always being built—or lost?

What if we treated discomfort not as something to avoid but as a tool to increase the range of what we can do with ease?

Building Comfort Through Capacity: A Simple Framework

Here are a few ways to live more toward the “capacity” end of the continuum:

• Choose friction on purpose: Take the stairs, carry your groceries, walk instead of drive. These small decisions compound.

• Train what you want to keep: Strength, mobility, endurance, coordination—all of it decays without use. Use it or lose it.

• Seek unfamiliarity: Try something new. The act of learning keeps your nervous system agile and your confidence sharp.

• Practice patience: Capacity builds slowly. Set goals based on what you want to be able to do, not how you want to look or feel this week.

• Reflect on your defaults: When you’re uncomfortable, what’s your instinct—avoid or adapt? That answer tells you where your edge is.

The Bottom Line

Comfort is not the enemy. But mistaking immediate ease for lasting peace is a trap. True comfort isn’t found by avoiding stressors—it’s built by gradually increasing your ability to handle them.

That’s the Comfort Paradox: the more you're willing to endure strategic discomfort now, the more you create a life where discomfort doesn’t control you later.

So choose your discomfort wisely. It’s not punishment—it’s preparation.

Proprioception and Pain: Reclaiming Control Through Body Awareness

Last week, we talked about how proprioception fuels strength—and how strength training sharpens proprioception. This week, we’re taking that same concept and applying it to pain. Because just as proprioception enhances your ability to lift and move with control, it also transforms how you experience and respond to pain.

Pain is one of the most misunderstood signals in the human body. It's often treated as something to silence or suppress, rather than a message to be interpreted. But when we shift our perspective, pain can become a powerful tool for motor learning and self-awareness. And at the heart of this shift is proprioception.

Proprioception—your ability to sense your body's position, movement, and force—is deeply connected to how we experience and respond to pain. The better your proprioception, the more informed your movement choices become, and the less threatening pain tends to feel. When proprioception is strong, pain becomes less about danger and more about feedback. Let’s explore how.

Pain as Information, Not Just Alarm

Pain is a complex output of the nervous system. It doesn’t always mean damage. Often, it means the brain perceives a threat, whether real or potential. Poor movement control, sudden load changes, or unfamiliar positions can all provoke a pain response, even when no tissue is injured.

This is where proprioception becomes critical. When your brain receives clear, detailed input about where your body is and how it's moving, it feels safer. And when the brain feels safe, it dials down the volume on pain. In contrast, vague or inconsistent movement signals (common after injury or during deconditioning) often lead the brain to err on the side of caution, which means amplifying pain.

In short, blurry body awareness leads to more perceived threat. Clear body awareness reduces it.

The Proprioceptive Buffer Against Pain

Imagine walking barefoot across a rocky surface. If your balance is shaky, your coordination off, or your joints unsteady, the sharpness of each step might feel overwhelming. But if you’ve developed strong proprioception through consistent training, you can make subtle adjustments to your foot placement, joint angles, and muscle tension to reduce the impact of each step.

This is how proprioception acts as a buffer. It doesn’t eliminate the rocks, but it gives your body options for how to respond to them. When movement options increase, the threat decreases. That means the same stimulus may be perceived with far less pain.

Strength Training as Proprioceptive Practice

Pain often emerges when movement feels unfamiliar or unsafe. But as we discussed last week, strength training isn't just about muscle. It is a proprioceptive training ground. Each rep is a chance to refine how you sense tension, alignment, and force. It improves force production, which amplifies the feedback sent through proprioceptive channels.

Getting stronger through more complex and varied patterns teaches the nervous system that more movement situations are safe and controllable. Training strength through greater ranges of motion also fosters stability in positions that might otherwise feel threatening or even injurious. The result? More confidence in more contexts—and that confidence is one of the best antidotes to pain.

When Pain Persists, Proprioception Guides

One of the most frustrating aspects of persistent pain is the feeling of being out of control. People describe their bodies as unpredictable or unreliable. They stop trusting movement. That withdrawal often leads to less activity, more deconditioning, and further reduction in proprioceptive input.

Rebuilding that trust means gradually reintroducing movement with an emphasis on awareness. Even basic movements—walking, shifting weight, reaching overhead—become opportunities to sharpen body awareness. As proprioception improves, the nervous system becomes less reactive, and pain intensity often begins to drop.

Importantly, the goal is not to eliminate pain entirely. It’s to move with clarity and intention, using pain as a signal to adapt, not avoid.

Case Example: The Knee That Hurts Going Down Stairs

Consider someone who feels knee pain every time she goes downstairs. Instead of avoiding the stairs, what if she used each descent as a diagnostic tool? Maybe the knee is tracking inward, the foot collapses, or the hip doesn't stabilize.

With improved proprioception, she can start to notice these subtleties. She might engage the hips and core more, distribute pressure across the foot, or control the speed of descent better. These micro-adjustments don’t require a complete overhaul—just awareness and intention.

The result? The same task (going downstairs) feels less threatening. Pain decreases, not because the knee is suddenly fixed, but because the body is moving with more clarity and less fear.

Pain + Proprioception = Strategy, Not Shutdown

Pain doesn't mean stop. It means change. And proprioception provides the data we need to decide how to change. This could mean adjusting load, modifying range of motion, or simply shifting attention to a neglected part of the movement.

Instead of treating pain as an enemy, we treat it like a coach. And proprioception is how we listen.

This mindset shift transforms rehab, training, and even everyday life. It gives people a sense of agency: "I can feel what's happening. I can respond. I have options."

Final Thoughts: Building Resilience Through Awareness

Proprioception is not just a performance enhancer. It’s a pain modulator. It helps us navigate the space between sensitivity and strength. It teaches us that pain, while uncomfortable, doesn’t have to be paralyzing.

Through thoughtful movement, consistent training, and a curious mindset, proprioception can be cultivated. And when it is, pain becomes less of a warning siren and more of a tuning fork—guiding us toward more effective, confident movement.

So the next time pain shows up, pause. Don’t just push through or shut down. Instead, tune in. Feel your body. Adjust. Explore. That’s the proprioceptive path to resilience.

Proprioception: The Link Between Strength and Movement Mastery

When people talk about balance, coordination, or body control, they’re usually referring to a system most have never heard of: proprioception.

Proprioception is your body’s ability to sense itself. It’s how you know where your arm is even if your eyes are closed, or how you can scratch your back without needing a mirror. It plays a critical role in movement, injury prevention, and performance—and it’s deeply intertwined with strength.

In fact, proprioception and strength are not just related; they exist in a feedback loop. The stronger you are, the more force you can produce. Greater force production enhances your ability to feel and control your muscles, improving proprioception. And better proprioception gives you the body awareness to train with greater precision, control, and efficiency, making it easier to get stronger. Let’s unpack how this works.

What Is Proprioception?

Proprioception is often referred to as the "sixth sense," a complex network of sensors in your body that send real-time information to your brain about limb position, joint angle, tension, and movement. This information allows you to move smoothly and adjust instantly to changes in your environment.

It comes from several sources:

• Muscle spindles: These are stretch receptors embedded in muscles that detect changes in muscle length and speed of movement.

• Golgi tendon organs: Located at the junction of muscles and tendons, these sense tension and help regulate force output.

• Joint receptors: These provide feedback on joint angles and position, especially near the end ranges of motion.

• Skin and fascia mechanoreceptors: These respond to stretch, pressure, and vibration, adding even more layers to your body map.

Your brain takes all this information and integrates it with your visual and vestibular systems (balance organs in your inner ear) to produce a clear map of where you are in space and how you’re moving through it. These sensory signals travel through the spinal cord, primarily via the dorsal column, a major pathway responsible for carrying proprioceptive and tactile information to the brain for interpretation.

Strength, Force, and Muscle Awareness

Strength is the ability to produce force against resistance. When you train to get stronger, you are not only improving your muscles' capacity to produce that force, but you are also enhancing your nervous system’s ability to recruit and coordinate those muscles efficiently.

That neuromuscular efficiency—the ability to call upon the right muscles at the right time with the right amount of force—is closely tied to proprioception. Here's why:

1. Greater force leads to greater feedback.

   • When you lift heavier weights or perform explosive movements, your body generates more sensory information. This "data" floods your proprioceptive system, reinforcing the connection between the brain and the body.

2. Improved proprioception enhances motor learning.

   • As your awareness of movement improves, you make better micro-adjustments. You start to notice how your feet press into the floor during a squat or how your lats engage during a pull-up. This fine-tuning accelerates strength gains.

3. Muscle contraction becomes more vivid.

   • With strength training, your proprioceptive system learns to detect subtle changes in muscle tone, tension, and joint alignment. This is what people describe as a “mind-muscle connection.”

In short, stronger muscles send stronger signals, and a more sensitive proprioceptive system knows how to interpret and refine those signals. It’s a bidirectional upgrade: strength feeds proprioception, and proprioception makes strength training more productive.

Why This Matters in Practice

Most people think they need to work on balance or coordination by doing wobbly exercises on unstable surfaces. But the truth is, well-designed strength training improves proprioception more effectively.

• Think of a deadlift. You need to feel the pressure in your feet, the tension in your hamstrings, the engagement of your core and lats. Each rep, if done with intention, sharpens proprioception.

• Consider unilateral training. Rear foot elevated split squats or single-arm presses challenge your body to maintain alignment and stability under load. This demands constant proprioceptive feedback.

• Look at gymnastics or calisthenics. These are pure expressions of strength and proprioception combined—you can’t muscle through a handstand without a high degree of body awareness.

Even in rehab, proprioceptive deficits are often what linger after an injury. That’s why reintroducing strength gradually in a controlled manner is essential for restoring movement control and confidence.

Train Strength to Train Awareness

The takeaway is this: building strength is not just about muscle size or aesthetics. It’s about teaching your body to produce force with precision. That precision demands awareness—and that awareness is proprioception.

When a beginner starts lifting, they often struggle not because they’re weak, but because they haven’t yet developed the internal sense of how to move their body under load. As they train, reps become smoother. They start to feel where their body is in space. That’s proprioception catching up to strength.

Meanwhile, experienced lifters often describe being able to "feel" when their technique is slightly off or when a muscle isn’t firing correctly. That heightened sensitivity allows them to make micro-adjustments in real time and continue making progress.

Closing Thoughts

Proprioception is what gives your body intelligence. It turns brute force into refined movement. It’s what allows you to express strength with grace and adaptability. And like strength, it can be trained.

You don’t need a BOSU ball or balance disc to do it. You just need a barbell, a kettlebell, or your own bodyweight—and the intention to feel your way through the work. Train with awareness, and both your strength and your movement will rise together.

Proprioception isn’t just a concept for rehab or sports performance. It’s a foundational element of living well. From navigating stairs to reacting quickly when you trip, your ability to feel your body is what keeps you moving through life with capability and confidence.

So the next time you train, don’t just count the reps. Feel the tension. Feel your weight shift. Feel the force. That’s proprioception—and it might be your most underrated strength skill.

Physical Intelligence: The Wisdom of Movement

There comes a point in adulthood when taking care of yourself is no longer a luxury or a side project—it’s a responsibility. Not just to you, but to the people who count on you. Physical capability as we age isn’t just about staying “fit.” It’s a reflection of values: how much you respect yourself, how seriously you take your role in others’ lives, and how willing you are to invest in capacity that supports all other forms of intelligence.

To move well as you age—and to look the part—is not a lucky break or the result of hiring the right trainer. It’s the product of lived experience, deliberate practice, and long-term commitment. In a world that outsources, shortcuts, and compartmentalizes health, showing up physically capable is a quiet signal of something deeper: intellectual maturity.

Because the reality is this—taking care of yourself isn’t simple, and it isn’t something you can pawn off to “the help.” Delegating your health is not the same as owning it. When someone in their 40s, 50s, or 60s moves with power and ease, or carries a posture that radiates energy, what you’re seeing is not vanity—it’s investment. It’s earned physical intelligence.

Not Just Muscles. Not Just Discipline.

Our culture still clings to tired stereotypes. The “dumb jock” who peaks early and flames out. The aging executive who works 80 hours a week and sacrifices their health for success. The notion that brains and bodies live in separate silos.

But those who understand what it takes to sustain high performance across domains know better. The best thinkers, leaders, and caregivers recognize that physical health supports intellectual and emotional bandwidth. The ability to move well, recover efficiently, and maintain energy isn’t a bonus—it’s infrastructure. It’s the foundation that allows you to show up fully in every area of life.

And it’s not something you can cram for. Physical intelligence is built gradually—through attention, awareness, and thousands of micro-decisions: to train when you don’t feel like it, to go for a walk instead of collapsing on the couch, to stretch, to train the breath, to eat something that supports tomorrow rather than just today. These aren’t shallow acts of willpower. They’re an ongoing expression of care—for your future self, your work, and your relationships.

Aesthetic as Evidence, Not Vanity

Yes, physical intelligence often comes with aesthetic side effects—low body fat, lean muscle, the energetic presence of someone who moves without hesitation. But these aren’t the goal. They’re evidence.

Evidence that you’ve put in time. That you know how to regulate effort and recover well. That you’re not just surviving, but actively expanding your capacity. That you’ve maintained or reclaimed a physical literacy that many let slip away after youth. In that sense, your movement and appearance become outward signs of an internal ethic.

Unlike appearance alone, movement doesn’t lie. You can’t fake a fluid gait, a powerful squat, or the ability to sprint up stairs in your 50s. These are the results of accrued physical wisdom—trial, error, adaptation, and long-term consistency. They signal that you’ve built capacity, and with it, resilience.

The False Hierarchy of Intelligence

Culturally, we’ve long placed physical capability beneath so-called intellectual pursuits. Professions like politics, law, finance, and medicine are widely respected for their mental demands—yet rarely expected to model physical accountability. Their status is tied to thought leadership, regardless of whether their body can meet the basic demands of a capable life.

Meanwhile, those who train consistently, move with competence, and maintain physical vitality over decades are often seen as less serious—athletic, perhaps, but not thoughtful. This creates a false division between the physical and the intellectual, as if thinking well and moving well exist in separate realms.

But true physical intelligence is no less cognitive. It requires systems thinking, pattern recognition, and constant feedback loops—between stress and recovery, effort and restraint. The physically intelligent adult doesn’t just follow a plan; they troubleshoot, adapt, and refine in real time.

To care for one’s body across time takes foresight, discipline, and a respect for complexity. It’s not indulgence—it’s stewardship. And in many ways, it offers a more grounded expression of maturity than titles or accolades alone. The mind and body aren’t separate. Physical practice fuels mental performance. Mental clarity supports physical presence.

They feed each other.

It’s Not About the Gym

This is not about being a gym rat. This is not about chasing youth. It’s about being the kind of adult who takes ownership of the things that matter. Health. Strength. Mobility. Energy. The ability to walk long distances, lift a suitcase without straining, or drop to the floor to play with your kids without hesitation—these aren’t luxuries. They’re the bare minimum for a full life.

The problem is, we’ve normalized decline. We’ve let it become acceptable—even expected—for people to lose their ability to move freely, recover quickly, or trust their body by midlife. But that’s not age. That’s neglect.

And neglect is not neutral. It offloads responsibility. It passes the burden to others—your partner, your coworkers, your kids, your healthcare system. By contrast, someone who maintains or improves their physical capacity over time is someone who creates room for more—more responsibility, more freedom, more connection, more life.

Physical Intelligence Is Grown, Not Given

Physical intelligence is not innate. It’s not something you either have or you don’t. It’s a practice—earned in reps, hours, and conscious choices over time. And unlike other forms of intelligence that peak early, this one can keep growing if you stay engaged.

You don’t need to be elite. You don’t need to do handstands or run marathons. But if you want to show up for your work, your family, your goals—you need to build the body that can carry the load.

That means investing in capability, not just aesthetics. It means treating movement not as something you “should” do, but as something you get to do—something that keeps your mind sharp, your body durable, and your presence strong.

Final Thought

We admire those who seem ageless in how they move—but we too often reduce it to genetics or privilege. In reality, it’s work. It’s thought. It’s a lifetime of adult decisions stacked on top of each other. It’s not luck, and it’s not vain.

It’s a signal.

That you care.

That you’re capable.

That you understand what it means to lead with both strength and intelligence—and that you know those things are not separate.

They’re connected. And the most impressive people don’t just know that.

They embody it.

Confident in Uncertainty: Letting Go of the “One Right Way” in Health and Fitness

If there’s one thing that experience has taught me working in health, fitness, and rehab, it’s this: certainty sells, but uncertainty transforms.

In a world overflowing with five-step fixes and viral protocols promising guaranteed results, it’s easy to forget that every body is different—and that’s not just a slogan. It’s a biological, psychological, and contextual reality. The deeper you go into any healing or performance journey, the more you begin to see that there is rarely one “best” way to move, eat, lift, stretch, or recover. Instead, there’s a web of possible paths—some clear, some winding, and all shaped by individual needs and ever-shifting circumstances.

Still, our culture tends to reward confidence that looks like certainty. We’re drawn to experts who speak in absolutes: “Never round your back when you deadlift.” “This is the only anti-inflammatory diet that works.” “Running is bad for your knees.” The health and fitness industry is saturated with black-and-white thinking because it gives people the comfort of clarity in a very messy and personal process.

But real confidence—the kind that builds trust, facilitates change, and sustains progress—doesn’t come from clinging to dogma. It comes from acknowledging uncertainty, exploring it, and being willing to stay curious even when we don’t have all the answers.

The Allure of the “Best Way”

When someone is in pain, feeling weak, or trying to make a lasting change, they’re vulnerable. They crave guidance, and understandably so. A definitive answer feels like a lifeline: “Just do this, and you’ll be fine.”

This is why the idea of “best practices” or “optimal” strategies in injury recovery, nutrition, and training is so appealing. It promises relief from complexity.

But what’s optimal on paper may not be practical—or even possible—for the person in front of you. A rigid protocol doesn’t know that someone sleeps four hours a night because they’re caring for an aging parent. It doesn’t know that a client’s back pain is tied more to their stress levels than to their hip mobility. It doesn’t ask whether someone wants to squat or deadlift or run 5Ks—it just assumes they should.

So, when we lead with certainty—when we say “this is the best way”—we often miss the opportunity to actually help someone. Because helping someone starts with understanding them, not prescribing at them.

Uncertainty Is Not the Enemy

Uncertainty gets a bad rap. It’s often interpreted as ignorance or weakness. But in the context of health and fitness, uncertainty is simply an acknowledgment of reality.

It’s a recognition that:

• The same treatment won’t yield the same result in two different people.

• Someone’s nervous system, environment, and history shape their response to movement and stress more than any single muscle imbalance.

• The body isn’t a machine; it’s a complex, adaptive system.

In rehab settings, this means accepting that a diagnosis doesn’t always predict function or pain. MRIs may show disc degeneration in people with no symptoms, and conversely, people with “clean” imaging may still be in debilitating pain. Knowing this doesn’t make us less skilled—it makes us more attuned to what’s really going on.

In training, it means we stop obsessing over perfect form and start paying attention to how someone feels when they move. We shift from “fixing” people to exploring with them. From enforcing the “right” way to deadlift to finding the way their body feels strong and safe pulling weight off the ground.

In nutrition, it means recognizing that the perfect macro ratio or anti-inflammatory supplement stack might matter far less than whether someone enjoys their meals, eats consistently, and isn’t under chronic stress about their food choices.

Uncertainty is not the absence of knowledge. It’s the presence of humility.

The Confidence to Say “I Don’t Know… Yet”

There’s a quiet kind of strength in saying, “Let’s figure this out together.”

It invites collaboration. It allows for experimentation. And it acknowledges that healing and growth are not linear processes with step-by-step guides. They’re deeply human experiences, filled with trial, error, learning, and change.

As professionals, our role shifts from being the answer-giver to being a curious, informed guide. We become co-investigators with the people we serve—paying attention, asking better questions, and adapting as we go.

Confidence in uncertainty also protects us from burnout. When we think we’re supposed to have all the answers, we carry an impossible burden. But when we embrace not-knowing as part of the process, we stay open, creative, and better able to support others through their complexities.

Curiosity Over Certainty

At Movement Professional, we talk often about being obsessively curious. This mindset is especially important when working with people in pain, or those who’ve “tried everything” and still feel stuck.

Curiosity allows us to notice the patterns others might miss. To ask, What happens if we try this differently? or What’s actually behind that tightness or fatigue? or What matters most to this person right now?

It also makes us better listeners.

Instead of just diagnosing and directing, we observe, we ask, and we adapt. We might try a breathing pattern to unlock hip motion. We might load a joint that seems fragile and watch it thrive. We might toss aside a rehab exercise because it’s not landing with the person—even if it “should” be working.

This process isn’t chaotic—it’s informed by evidence, experience, and intuition. But it’s not chained to protocol. It allows space for surprise and emergence. And that’s where the most meaningful change happens.

Letting Go of the “One Right Way”

There’s nothing wrong with having principles, frameworks, or systems. But when those become rigid rules instead of flexible tools, they limit us—and the people we’re trying to help.

Letting go of the “one right way” doesn’t mean abandoning science or structure. It means holding those tools lightly and applying them with context and care. It means having the courage to stay grounded when the path forward isn’t obvious.

The paradox is this: when we allow uncertainty into the room, people often feel more safe, not less. They sense that we’re not here to fit them into a method but to find something that actually fits them.

And in that space—between evidence and experience, structure and adaptability, knowledge and not-knowing—true confidence is built.

Closing Thought
Uncertainty isn’t a threat to our authority as health and fitness professionals—it’s a sign of maturity. It means we’ve moved past needing to prove we’re right and into the realm of being truly helpful.

So here’s to being confident in uncertainty. To exploring, adapting, and being humble enough to say, “Let’s learn together.” That’s not weakness—it’s the foundation of trust, resilience, and real transformation.

Learning from Pain While Gaining Function: A Shift Toward Longevity

In a culture where comfort is king, pain is often seen as the villain—something to be avoided, silenced, or eliminated as quickly as possible. But what if pain isn’t the problem? What if, instead, it’s a necessary teacher—a signal that invites us to explore, adapt, and evolve? When we shift our mindset from “eliminate pain” to “learn from pain,” we uncover a powerful path toward long-term function and physical longevity.

Pain as an Inevitable and Individual Experience

Pain is not only inevitable—it’s also highly relative. The same movement or posture can feel completely different to two people with identical injuries, and even within the same body, pain can appear under one context and vanish in another. This subjectivity reveals an important truth: pain is not always a reliable marker of damage or danger. More often, it's a sign that something in our system—be it structural, neurological, or behavioral—is asking for attention and adaptation.

To deny or suppress pain outright is to miss a valuable opportunity for learning. When we treat pain as feedback, rather than failure, we begin to build a deeper understanding of our bodies and how they function. That understanding is a cornerstone of both injury resilience and high-level performance over the long haul.

Redefining the Goal: From Pain-Free to Function-Full

Longevity is often confused with simply staying injury-free or pain-free, but that bar is far too low. The real goal is to retain and regain function across the widest possible range of physical contexts. That means being able to squat, hinge, carry, rotate, climb, sprint, and even sit or stand for long periods without compensations that accumulate into dysfunction.

And perhaps more importantly, it means gaining function in areas previously neglected. Most people are remarkably good at repeating the same movement patterns—the same lifts, the same workouts, the same daily postures. But functional longevity requires variability. The body thrives on novel input, and the nervous system is nourished by movement diversity.

Pain often shows up when function has been ignored or overly narrowed. That hip twinge during a hike, or that shoulder ache during your fifth day of bench pressing, isn’t always a sign of breakdown. Sometimes, it’s your body letting you know it’s time to expand your movement vocabulary.

The Beginner’s Mind: A Gateway to Progress

The concept of shoshin, or "beginner’s mind," is rooted in Zen Buddhism and emphasizes approaching experiences with openness, curiosity, and lack of preconceptions. In the context of movement and rehabilitation, beginner’s mind is incredibly potent.

When we’re new to something—be it a skill, a sport, or even a recovery process—our rate of improvement tends to be high. Progress comes quickly not because we're weak or broken, but because there's so much untapped potential. In contrast, when we become specialists in certain movements, we often plateau, and even regress. We get comfortable. We stop exploring.

Pain can be a forced reintroduction to beginner’s mind. It asks us to step back, reassess our assumptions, and start fresh. This might mean returning to foundational movements with new awareness, changing how we breathe, altering our loading strategies, or exploring entirely unfamiliar movement patterns. Pain slows us down, which—ironically—is often the exact stimulus needed to progress in a sustainable way.

Function Follows Awareness

To grow functional capacity, you first have to perceive what’s missing. And often, what’s missing isn’t strength or endurance—it’s attention. Awareness of how your feet contact the ground, how your ribs move when you breathe, how your pelvis shifts when you rotate—these small details create the foundation for improved movement efficiency and injury resilience.

Pain often heightens this awareness. It breaks our autopilot. It makes us hyper-attuned to areas we previously ignored. If you’ve ever had a nagging back injury, you know exactly how many steps it takes to walk to the fridge. You know the angle of your car seat. You know exactly when your posture starts to unravel. While this can be frustrating, it also provides an incredible window into refinement.

With guidance and patience, pain-induced awareness can be redirected from avoidance to exploration. It can lead to stronger, more coordinated, and more adaptable function than ever before.

Function Is a Skill, Not a Guarantee

It’s easy to assume that function is a default setting. But like any skill, function must be practiced, challenged, and redefined over time. In youth, movement variety is built into life. Kids run, jump, fall, roll, climb, and rest in all sorts of positions. As adults, we often trade that variability for convenience and specialization.

This isn’t necessarily bad—but it comes at a cost. Without regular functional challenges, we lose physical options. We lose robustness. And we become more vulnerable to injury when we inevitably step outside our usual movement patterns.

A functional longevity approach demands that we treat function as a practice—one that doesn’t end when pain resolves or when a fitness goal is achieved. Instead, we continue exploring, adjusting, and refining. We seek out new skills. We revisit old ones. We intentionally expose ourselves to unfamiliar movement contexts—often ones we’re not good at—and in doing so, we slow the aging process and extend the lifespan of our physical capability.

The Value of Function vs. the Cost of Discomfort

At some point, every person who values movement will face a difficult decision: Is the function I desire worth the discomfort it provokes? Whether that’s playing pickup basketball with an achy knee, hiking steep terrain with stiff hips, or getting back into jiu-jitsu despite a cranky shoulder—pain invites a choice.

You can avoid the activity. Or you can adapt your body to better tolerate and express that function. There’s no universally right answer. But the longer you live, the more frequently this question will arise. And the more you avoid, the smaller your world becomes.

We have to ask ourselves: How valuable is this function to me? What am I willing to do to keep it? For example, if basketball lights you up and connects you to community, health, and joy, giving it up because of pain may be far more damaging than committing to a process that makes your knees more resilient. That process may require strength training, mobility work, movement re-education, and a lot of time outside your comfort zone—but it’s an investment in keeping something deeply meaningful.

Function isn't free. It costs effort, adaptability, and often a temporary increase in discomfort. But avoidance has a cost too—one that may only be felt once too many of your favorite activities are already off the table. We should all decide what’s worth keeping, and then build our bodies to support that.

From Fixing to Evolving

It’s tempting to approach pain or dysfunction with a “fix it and forget it” mindset. But what if we saw those moments not as problems to solve, but invitations to grow?

Pain teaches us that function is never static. It’s constantly in flux—shaped by our choices, our environments, our stresses, and our habits. By reframing pain as part of a larger process of adaptation, we empower ourselves to stay in the game longer, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

This is the essence of a movement practice grounded in longevity: not chasing perfection, but embracing imperfection as a catalyst for refinement. Not eliminating discomfort, but learning from it. Not repeating the same comfortable motions, but constantly seeking new edges of capacity and awareness.

Closing Thoughts

Pain doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means there’s something to be discovered.

Longevity isn’t just about extending time—it’s about expanding function. The more functional options you have, the more you can express your physical self. The more curious and engaged you are with your movement, the more durable that self becomes.

So whether you’re rehabbing an injury, exploring a new sport, or simply trying to age well, remember: improvement begins where familiarity ends. Start again. Start often. Stay curious. That’s the path to a long and functional life.

The Forgotten Side of Strength: Why You Need to Train the Ulnar Side of Your Grip

Grip strength is one of the most foundational elements of human movement and performance. But within this seemingly simple function lies a critical—and often neglected—detail: the role of the ulnar side of the hand in producing full-body strength, stability, and resilience.

When people train grip, they often default to emphasizing the thumb, which plays a central role in pinching, picking up, and manipulating objects. As the largest and most dexterous digit, it naturally becomes the focal point. This leads to a bias toward the radial side of the hand, where most unconsciously direct their effort—leaving the ulnar side undertrained and underutilized.

But if you ignore the ulnar side—the pinky-side of the hand and forearm—you’re leaving significant strength potential untapped.

🧭 Why the Ulnar Side Matters

The ulnar side includes:

• The 4th and 5th digits (ring and pinky fingers)

• The hypothenar eminence (the muscular pad at the base of the pinky)

• The flexor carpi ulnaris, ulnar half of flexor digitorum profundus, and supporting wrist and forearm structures

These structures are critical for:

• Wrist and hand flexion

• Supination and torque production

• Grip endurance during prolonged holds

• Full-hand engagement during strength tasks

Ignoring this side of the hand is like skipping leg day for your grip.

🧠 Strength Requires Symmetry: Evidence for Ulnar Engagement

Research confirms that maximal grip strength isn't just about the radial digits. A 2020 study in the Journal of Biomechanics showed that the ulnar-side flexors (particularly the flexor carpi ulnaris and the ulnar portion of the flexor digitorum profundus) are heavily activated during peak grip efforts [1]. These muscles become even more important during sustained grip holds, where fatigue resilience matters more than peak force.

Another study in Clinical Biomechanics (2018) found that in tasks like carrying heavy loads or hanging from bars, the entire hand must contribute, and loss of engagement from the ulnar side significantly compromised total grip time and safety [2].

🧗‍♂️ Ulnar Grip in Action: Real Demands and How to Train Them

High-level grip demands in both the gym and sport don’t rely solely on the thumb or index finger. To truly excel at pulling, lifting, and hanging tasks, you need the full hand engaged—especially the often-overlooked ulnar side.

Below are key movements where the ulnar grip matters most, along with training strategies to build strength in those same patterns:

🏋️‍♂️ Heavy Deadlifts

Without full-hand engagement—especially from the pinky and ring fingers—the bar will roll out of your grip. These ulnar digits act as anchors, maintaining hold when radial-side fatigue sets in.
👉 Train It:

• Barbell Torque and Lift: Compress the pinky side of your hand into the bar, apply crushing grip force, and screw your shoulders into their sockets to create full-body tension and stability. Once established, maintain this connection throughout the lift.

🧍‍♂️ False Grip Pulls: Building Ulnar-Side Strength Through Full-Range Tension

False grip pulls are a highly effective way to develop strength and control on the ulnar side of the hand and wrist. By anchoring the wrist over gymnastic rings and maintaining a flexed wrist position throughout the movement, these pulls place high demand on the hypothenar eminence, flexor carpi ulnaris, and the 4th and 5th finger flexors—areas often undertrained in standard grip work. This variation shifts the effort away from the thumb-dominant radial side and reinforces full-hand engagement.

👉 Train It:

• False Grip Ring Rows: Establish ulnar-side engagement in a horizontal plane.

• False Grip Overhead Hangs (with and without Foot Support): Build static strength and endurance at the wrist and hypothenar pad.

• False Grip Pull-Ups: Pull through full range while maintaining wrist flexion and hypothenar compression.

• False Grip Muscle-Ups: Advanced integration of grip, wrist, and full-body coordination under ulnar-side tension.

💡 Coaching Tip:
Keep constant pressure through the hypothenar pad and avoid letting your grip drift toward the thumb. Initiate the pull from the pinky-side connection for maximal transfer up the chain.

🚶‍♂️ Carries with Ulnar Emphasis: Flexed Wrist + Pistol Grip Combo

Combining a flexed wrist with a pistol grip—where the thumb and index are extended—forces the load onto the hypothenar eminence and ulnar digits, isolating and strengthening them under tension.
👉 How To:

• Carry a dumbbell or kettlebell with the wrist slightly flexed.

• Extend the thumb and index finger (like a “pistol”), gripping only with the middle, ring, and pinky fingers.

• Focus on keeping the load balanced through the pinky-side of the palm.

💡 Progression:
Walk for time or distance, and increase load gradually, making the maintenance of the grip the priority.

🌀 Indian Club Training (Pistol Grip Variations)

Indian clubs offer a dynamic way to train the wrist and grip together. Using a pistol grip (thumb and index extended) during swings shifts demand to the ulnar stabilizers while improving shoulder, elbow, and wrist coordination.
👉 Train It:

• Use light-to-moderate Indian clubs with a pistol grip.

• Focus on circular or figure-8 patterns with controlled deceleration—pinky-side control is key here.

• Maintain slight wrist flexion during the swing to increase hypothenar activation.

💡 Bonus: This method also reinforces forearm pronation/supination mechanics while increasing grip endurance and neural control.

🎯 Final Thought

By layering real-world movement with targeted training that isolates and strengthens the ulnar side, you not only enhance your grip but also protect against imbalances, overuse, and early fatigue. Training the pinky-side of your hand might be the smallest change you make—but it could unlock your biggest gains in pulling strength, grip durability, and injury resilience.

📚 References

1. Vigouroux, L., Quaine, F., & Labarre-Vila, A. (2020). Muscle usage and strength profile in elite rock climbers during gripping. Journal of Biomechanics, 104, 109722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2020.109722

2. Budoff, J. E., Logan, A. J., et al. (2018). Functional grip performance and muscle activation during load carriage. Clinical Biomechanics, 54, 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2018.03.001

What’s Wrong vs. With What: Rethinking Musculoskeletal Pain

When it comes to musculoskeletal pain—whether it’s an aching shoulder, a stubborn back, or a nagging knee—most people start with the same question:

“What’s wrong?”

This is a natural and understandable instinct. Pain grabs our attention, and we want answers. In many cases, the “what’s wrong” mindset leads us to seek a diagnosis: a label that identifies the source of our discomfort. Maybe it’s a herniated disc. Maybe it’s rotator cuff tendinopathy. Maybe it’s hip impingement. These diagnoses carry the weight of something damaged—something broken that needs fixing.

But here’s the problem.

The “what’s wrong” approach often assumes there’s a single, static cause—one that a practitioner can pinpoint, and one that will lead to a clear treatment path. It reinforces the idea that pain is the result of something that has gone awry and needs to be externally repaired. It frames the patient as the passive recipient of care. And it encourages a search for the one magic fix—be it a pill, a shot, or even surgery.

Yet, for most people dealing with persistent musculoskeletal pain, that approach rarely provides the whole story.

There’s another question we could ask instead:

“With what?”

That may sound vague at first, but it’s a fundamental shift in perspective. “With what” turns our attention toward how we’re moving, loading, adapting, and using our bodies. It acknowledges that pain is not just a mechanical failure, but a signal—an invitation to change something in the way we move, breathe, stand, train, or recover.

Let’s break this down.

The Trap of the “What’s Wrong” Model

Pain, especially when it lingers or recurs, feels like a warning light. So it makes sense that people want to know what’s broken. This mindset is rooted in the structural model of medicine, which has historically been very successful in acute trauma cases. If you break a bone, you get an X-ray. It shows the break. The diagnosis matches the damage. You get a cast, and it heals.

But chronic or movement-related pain is rarely that simple.

Someone might get an MRI of their lower back and be told they have degenerative disc disease. That sounds scary—but countless people without any pain at all have similar imaging findings. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that many people have bulging discs or arthritis visible on scans but report no symptoms.

What’s more, the diagnosis itself can shape the experience of pain. When someone is told they have a “torn” structure or that their spine is “degenerating,” it often creates fear. That fear can reduce movement, increase guarding, and heighten sensitivity—ultimately reinforcing the pain.

In this model, the body is treated like a machine that breaks down. The job of the provider is to find the faulty part and fix it.

But humans aren’t machines. We are adaptable, ever-changing systems. And most pain isn’t a sign of damage—it’s a sign of load intolerance or movement inefficiency. That’s where the “with what” question becomes powerful.

The Wisdom of “With What”

Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with my shoulder?” we might ask:

• With what movement does it hurt?

• With what level of load, intensity, or duration do symptoms show up?

• With what positioning do I feel relief—or increased discomfort?

• With what breathing or bracing strategy am I unconsciously moving?

• With what muscle groups am I compensating?

This approach accepts that pain is real, but views it as a signal, not a diagnosis. It shifts the focus from finding damage to identifying a pattern. It’s a question of capacity and context.

Take someone who has knee pain while squatting. The “what’s wrong” model might lead to imaging, a diagnosis like chondromalacia, and a prescription for rest and NSAIDs. But the “with what” model asks what kind of squat causes pain. Is it a deep squat? A narrow stance? With load or without? Can they tolerate a lunge or step-up?

Now we have information.

Maybe they lack ankle mobility, so their knee tracks forward too early. Maybe they shift weight toward one leg. Maybe they don’t engage their hips. Rather than blaming the knee, we explore with what movement strategy the pain is emerging—and more importantly, how it might be improved.

Pain becomes part of the feedback loop.

From Diagnosis to Dialogue

The beauty of the “with what” mindset is that it puts the person experiencing pain back in the driver’s seat. It invites experimentation. It encourages curiosity. And it makes the process of recovery more collaborative and exploratory—not just a passive wait for someone else to “fix it.”

This mindset shifts the focus from fear to skill. Instead of reacting to pain with panic or avoidance, it encourages observation and adaptation. You begin to see pain not as a sign of failure, but as a prompt to explore. You might modify the load you're using, change your movement strategy, vary your warm-up, adjust your recovery habits, or reflect on sleep and stress levels.

Pain isn’t ignored—but it isn’t catastrophized either. It becomes part of a thoughtful feedback system.

Ask:

• With what habits did this pain develop?

• With what changes does it improve?

• With what inputs—be it strength training, breathing, walking, or recovery strategies—can I build resilience?

The answers may not be instant. But they lead to self-efficacy, not fear. And that shift—from diagnosis to dialogue, from passivity to participation—is where real progress begins.

The Practitioner’s Role

This shift doesn’t mean practitioners aren’t needed. Quite the opposite. A good physical therapist, trainer, or movement specialist is trained to ask these “with what” questions. They observe patterns, assess load tolerance, test capacities, and guide the process of movement re-education.

Rather than simply delivering a diagnosis, they become a coach in the discovery process.

This is why two people with the same diagnosis can have completely different outcomes. It’s not about what the MRI says. It’s about how each person moves, adapts, and responds.

Final Thoughts

The next time you’re in pain, consider reframing the conversation.

Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” ask, “With what inputs, patterns, or demands did this pain emerge—and how might I change them?”

Pain is rarely just about damage. It’s about information. About load. About perception. And about adaptability.

When you stop seeking a fix and start seeking understanding, the path forward gets a lot clearer.

You are not broken. You are responding.

And that means you can respond differently.

Obsessive Curiosity: Rehabbing with Persistence and Openness

When you're working through an injury—whether it's a nagging tendon issue, post-surgical recovery, or a flare-up of something chronic—it's easy to fall into extremes.

You might become paralyzed by fear: constantly scanning your body for danger, catastrophizing every twinge, and backing away at the first sign of discomfort. Or you might go the other way: stubbornly pushing through pain, trying to "tough it out," and repeating the same aggravating behaviors day after day.

But there’s a middle way. One that’s grounded in action, but also awareness.

A way of showing up again and again—not to force your body into submission, but to listen, learn, and adjust.

This is called being obsessively curious.

What Does It Mean to Be Obsessively Curious?

Let’s break this down.

“Obsessive” - Consistency Without Burnout

We’re not talking about obsessive in a pathological sense, but rather a form of relentless engagement. An obsession with showing up. Not once in a while when you’re feeling good, or when life is easy—but every day, in some form, regardless of outcome.

This kind of obsession isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing with intention. Returning to your breath, your exercises, your movement routines—not because they’re always fun or exciting, but because you’ve made a commitment to your recovery.

“Curious” - Judgment-Free Observation

Curiosity means approaching your body like a scientist, not a judge.

Instead of labeling pain as “bad” or improvement as “good,” curiosity asks:

• What happens when I do this movement slower?

• Does breathing differently change the outcome?

• How does my body feel in the morning vs. the evening?

• What if I try a different foot position?

• Is this a protective response or tissue damage?

This is not about guessing blindly—it’s about making small, measurable experiments and tracking the results. Curiosity also keeps you from getting too attached to one solution. If something isn’t working, you don’t give up—you pivot.

The Problem with Binary Thinking in Rehab

So many people get stuck in the “black and white” trap:

• “It hurt, so it must be bad.”

• “It didn’t hurt, so I must be good to go.”

• “I missed a day, so I’ve failed.”

• “I trained through it, so I’m winning.”

Binary thinking closes the door on exploration. Curiosity, on the other hand, invites nuance.

For example: a little discomfort during rehab isn’t necessarily a red flag—it might be part of the adaptive process. But if it spikes to sharp pain, swells afterward, or lingers for hours, that’s feedback to change course. The curious mind sees this not as failure, but as data.

Obsessive Curiosity in Action

Let’s say you’re dealing with Achilles tendinopathy. Here’s how obsessive curiosity might play out:

1. Start with a Baseline
   Measure your pain on a scale, test your range of motion, and note which activities aggravate the issue.

2. Introduce a Variable
   Try slow heel raises off a step, 3x/week. Vary the tempo. Test how it feels at different times of day.

3. Track Everything
   Journal your sessions. Note energy levels, stress, nutrition, sleep, and pain scores.

4. Ask Questions

   • What if I shift my weight medially?

   • What if I do this after isometrics?

   • How does adding toe-spread activation influence symptoms?

5. Zoom In and Out
   Look at individual data points, but also the broader trend over weeks and months. Is there progress?

Fear vs. Curiosity

It’s important to distinguish curiosity from fear.

Fear says:

“Don’t do anything that might hurt—it’s not worth the risk.”

Curiosity says:

“Let’s see how my body responds to a small, controlled test. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll adjust.”

Fear is reactive. Curiosity is responsive.

Fear narrows the field of action. Curiosity expands it.

This doesn’t mean being reckless. You still use structure, evidence, and expertise—but you also honor your body’s complexity. Healing is rarely linear, and curiosity gives you the tools to adapt.

How to Cultivate Obsessive Curiosity

This mindset isn’t automatic. But it can be trained:

• Keep a rehab log. Track symptoms, sets/reps, sleep, stress, and any questions that come up.

• Change one thing at a time. Avoid the urge to overhaul everything—otherwise, you won’t know what helped.

• Reflect weekly. Ask: What improved? What didn’t? What did I learn?

• Practice mindfulness. Get comfortable observing your body without judgment. Meditation or breathwork can help build this skill.

• Work with someone who supports inquiry. Whether it’s a PT, coach, or movement professional, find someone who encourages feedback and exploration, not rigid programming.

The Long Game

Injury recovery is a process of reintroducing your body to challenge without overwhelm. And the truth is, nobody—not even the best therapist or coach—has all the answers on day one.

But obsessive curiosity gets you closer.

It says: “I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep asking questions. I’ll keep refining. And over time, I’ll figure it out.”

Not through force.

Not through fear.

But through persistent engagement, clear-eyed observation, and a deep respect for your body’s wisdom.

Ready to put obsessive curiosity into practice?

Start small. Ask one question. Track one thing. Test one change. Then come back tomorrow, and do it again.

That’s how progress becomes not just possible—but inevitable.