“Drug it.”
“Avoid its abilities.”
These are the two most common pieces of advice when encountering pain.
Anyone can say those two things.
But very FEW have mastered:
“FEEL IT.”
“INCREASE ITS ABILITIES.”
Whether you’re a trainer or a fireman or a veterinarian or a kindergarten teacher…
YOU can now do this and become a world-class master.
PART 1: ABILITY
To address ability, you may simply have to look LOWER.
For the knee, mainstream exercise science gave up and went with “avoid it.”
But if we look at something which is EXTENSIVELY proven to be safe and loaded with benefits - backward walking - we see that it exercises the NUMBER ONE position we’re told to avoid for the knee:
Knee.
Over.
Toes.
My contribution was not figuring out backward walking.
My contribution was OBSERVING and clarifying that it is knee over toes.
This instantly debunks “no knees over toes,” which set back the field of understanding and improving ABILITY for 40 years.
And if we continue on this path of ABILITY, we wind up with winners like the ATG Split Squat:
This leads us to…
PART 2: FEELING
Pain is COMMUNICATION from your body!
I don’t want ability with PAIN, I want ability WITHOUT PAIN.
So I only ever train at the level of ability I have that FEELS GOOD.
Lo and behold…
10 years later…
I GOT A WHOLE HEAP OF ABILITY WITHOUT PAIN!
I got what I asked for.
CONCLUSION
The article stops here because with these two viewpoints alone you can rocket ahead of modern exercise science in helping people achieve greater pain-free ability.
Adding more to this article would devalue the importance of these two approaches.
But don’t worry. I love writing and I haven’t missed a week in 60+ weeks. I look forward to it every single time.
Talk soon.
Yours in Solutions,
Ben
We send out new articles weekly.