For most of my life, I just kinda figured it hurt to do athletic stuff.
Nevermind that I was failing to take care of my body…
No, that couldn’t have had anything to do with it.
“It just hurts to do athlete stuff.”
And on some level, that’s true.
Pushing your body to find new limits isn’t exactly a “pain-free” experience.
Even when nothing “hurts,” it doesn’t always feel great to improve your cardio or your strength.
VO2 Max repeats don’t feel very good.
Neither do heavy squats.
But those kinds of “pain” are just part of the game when it comes to improving your athleticism.
You’re probably going to find little niggles and problems during your training.
A weird groin thing or some strange Achilles stuff might just… happen for a bit.
Hell, you might even get properly injured from time to time.
In spite of my best efforts, I sprained my ankle 3 times this year and none of those sprains were a result of training as much as they were dogs and rocks.
But those things aren’t really the kinds of “pain” I’m talking about.
For years, I just thought it was normal for certain activities to hurt.
Let’s use my foot as an example.
I had a pain in the ball of my foot for over 3 years.
I ran hundreds of miles, paced people, and hiked the Grand Canyon… all with a pain in the ball of my foot.
And I just thought it was normal.
I thought my feet were a weird shape or that my shoes weren’t a good fit and that I was just doomed for things to feel bad.
But no.
I just had a lot of little things going on that led to a persistent pain in my left foot.
For one, I have really tight calves and hamstrings.
As a result, when I’d run up even relatively low-grade hills, I couldn’t really push through my whole foot.
So most of my foot would float, throwing all of my weight into a very small section of my forefoot.
My left foot also has a tendency to pronate excessively due to an ankle injury I had in college.
Now, “pronation” isn’t bad.
Your foot is supposed to pronate as you run.
That’s how it creates force.
Yet it’s supposed to land in supination and pronate as you roll through.
If it lands in pronation, then your foot isn’t really able to create power, so you have to generate that power from somewhere else.
In my case, I was creating that force at my ankle and hip.
So instead of running with a straight foot, I kept running with my foot slightly turned out – especially when going uphill.
This just drove more and more force through the wrong part of my foot and I ended up with pain.
For years.
And I just thought that was kinda normal.
I mean, I knew it wasn’t normal for other people, but I just figured it was normal for me.
Should I have gone to a doctor?
Yea.
I should have.
In fact, that’s what I did last summer and that’s how I started down a path to actually fix the problem.
Why did I wait so long?
Well, that’s a complicated answer, but in short our health system is kinda shit and for a lot of my adult life I didn’t have great health insurance so I’ve just gotten fairly used to ignoring these kind of problems.
Mistake?
Yea.
Understandable?
Also yea.
Thankfully, last summer I was able to see a podiatrist and as a result, I’ve been taking the necessary steps to actually fix this particular chronic foot pain.
It still shows up occasionally, but these days it’s pretty rare.
And what was the cure?
1 – Stretch calf.
2 – Stretch hamstring.
3 – Strengthen foot.
4 – Strengthen hip.
5 – Use poles on steep uphills.
Slight improvements in all of those areas has resulted in massive overall improvements to my foot.
And if I’m being honest, none of that is particularly complicated.
I’ve designed pretty much all of the corrective work myself.
I just needed a bit of a roadmap to figure out where the hell I was going.
And sure enough, running has become a lot more enjoyable since my foot has become less “stabby.”
Some pain is normal in training.
If you search for your limits, you might find them.
Yet chronic pain isn’t something we should just necessarily accept.
At the very least, we should try to improve it rather than “powering through” and “learning to live with it.”
Sometimes, it won’t just “go away.”
You have to be a little proactive and actually address the issue.
Hope you’re having a great start to your week.