It might come as a surprise that your most important move toward no longer feeling neck and shoulder pain can be found in how you think about the problem.
The way we see the problem is the problem.
— Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
While neck and shoulder pain may be your primary concern, gaining an accurate understanding of pain and function will also apply to other areas of your body.
Take, for example, back pain. It continues to be the most common area where people experience pain. And yet, every year, people who don’t know what they don’t know continue to spend billions of dollars on stuff that’s aimed at the area where they feel pain.
In our daily lives, we’re often guessing about the facts based on hints, hunches, bias, misinformation, and the like.
— Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert and The Author of Loserthink
If you have felt pain or a muscle knot in your neck and shoulders, you have undoubtedly had someone address the area where you feel pain.
The billion dollar question worth asking, Why do practitioners continue to chase pain and pretend that they are doing more than that?
To get a feel for how far the ladder is from the right wall, professional sports teams continue to sign athletes to multi-million dollar contracts without knowing if muscles are capable of pulling their weight at the right time.
At this point, you might be asking, Why has there been little change in how our muscular systems have been addressed?
Ego gets you into trouble and pride keeps you there.
— Dr. Tom Deters
Ego aside, practitioners get locked into doing what fits into a business model.
As it turns out, what fits into a business model looks and feels a lot different than what’s best for your neck and shoulder pain.
Time limitations and not getting a complete map of the territory in college are two factors that are rarely acknowledged.
(Perspective)
Case in point, everyone who attends university with the intent to work with the musculoskeletal system has heard a professor say, “If you have too much mobility at a joint, you don’t have enough stability.”
Across the board, pain* and the rate of injuries* hasn’t gone down.
Then, there’s the resistance. It will go to great lengths to deceive and distract a practitioner.
Left to its own devices, the resistance will pull the shortest levers and turn the right knobs ever so slightly. All because it wants what it wants.
Your best bet is to take the resistance seriously. Because it has plenty of leverage to wreak-havoc on you and anyone who pays it no mind.
Think of the resistance as self-sabotage.
Cognitive bias, confirmation bias, and the self-serving bias are also at play.
Without knowing it, practitioners tend to remain tethered to deeply held beliefs that don’t allow for the best possible outcomes.
From a place of quiet desperation, these deeply held beliefs back them into a corner. It’s there that they search for the next best guess.
They are stuck in default mode (and pretending it’s something else).
When we rely on our rational selves, there’s a tendency to get caught up in the same vicious circle.
To gain traction on neck and shoulder pain, you’ll want to recognize that muscles that can’t provide stability at the right time will force the surrounding muscles to be overtaxed.
This forces your muscles to fatigue faster than they would when more stability is present.
Along with instability*, muscle fatigue is the reason why you continue to feel tightness and restricted range of motion throughout your neck and shoulders.
When the weeds aren’t pulled out by their roots, your body’s natural response is for the surrounding muscles to tighten.
The tightening of muscles is your body’s response to protect you from doing more harm.
Going after what feels tight with foam rollers, stretching, and deep tissue massage goes against what your body has figured out for you.
While popular opinion is to see tight muscles as bad, the truth is they are doing their best to serve you.
Deep down, I think, most people know when an approach to neck and shoulder pain hasn’t delivered on a promise.
Acknowledging that is a whole other story.
Rather than help you get out from under what’s going on with your neck and shoulders, it’s possible the stories you tell yourself are contributing to even more hurt.
(Principles)
Remember, muscles are your first line of defense to prevent pain and injuries.
When muscles aren’t capable of providing stability at the right time, your joints take on more stress.
Releasing muscles that are primarily responsible for providing stability increases instability*.
Adding instability to that which was already unstable increases compensation.
While more compensation isn’t what you want to aim for, it’s possible for the volume to be turned down.
Just enough that the level of pain no longer registers at such a high frequency.
Albeit the pain is no longer sounding off, compensation explains why you sense a subtle underlying feeling that something is still not right.
Success leaves clues. — Jim Rohn
Two clues that the source of your pain hasn’t been addressed
- You don’t have the same level of pain, but if we are being honest, you still have some of the same symptoms*
- You haven’t reached a place where you can perform* an activity that you used to be able to do
To make sense of what you just read, pause, and recognize that most approaches to neck and shoulder pain are aimed at increasing mobility.
Any attempts at increasing strength will encourage more compensation.
The reason: the pre-existing asymmetries were not addressed prior to strengthening. Thus, your body is left to find countless ways to compensate.
Every day, without knowing it, people who go through rehab for pain and injuries are leaving it up to their body to compensate.
Instead of waiting around for practitioners to change their minds, your best bet is to train your brain to find your mind.
SHIP
(Art)
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Books Mentioned
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Loserthink by Scott Adams
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I have held a license to practice massage therapy for over 29 years. Early in my career, I was a nationally certified personal trainer for 18 years. During that time, I completed thousands of one-on-one private training sessions. I went on to teach biomechanics to personal trainers, group exercise instructors, and physical therapists throughout New England.
I worked as a sports massage therapist at ESPN.
Over the last few years, I have been quoted in Runner’s World UK, Massage Therapy & Bodywork, Massage Magazine, IDEA Fitness Journal, Massage & Fitness Magazine, and The Guardian Liberty Voice. I have also served as an applied biomechanics consultant for the fitness staff at Canyon Ranch, The Greenbrier, and ESPN.
From 2009 to 2018, I immensely enjoyed teaching applied anatomy & kinesiology at Parker University.
I offer the best deep tissue and sports massage at Engaging Muscles Massage in Dallas, Texas.
