Meet Jaime. When she first started working with us, she was a busy sales professional in her mid-late 30s, and she was in pain. A lot of pain. Everything from her lower back and below hurt. She’s tried lots of different things in the past to help her with her pain, but nothing really worked well, or permanently. Until she got on her current program. And that’s what you’ll learn about in this article.

We’ll talk about:

  • How the pain was affecting Jaime
  • What Jaime has tried in the past to help her get rid of the pain, and how it worked (or didn’t)
  • The exercise program that her trainer used with her to help her reduce the pain
  • Challenges that she experienced along the way
  • How her life is different now, that she’s almost pain-free

If you’d like to hear Jaime tell her own story, check out her video below.

And if you’re also experiencing pain, we have a special program called “Pain-Free 1-2-3.” To see if you qualify for this program, just email me with the words “Pain-Free 1-2-3” in the subject line.

How the Pain Was Affecting Jaime

               At first, Jaime heard that running is good for you. So she started running. After enough running, her knees and IT band (side of the thigh) started to hurt. But “running is good for you”. So she kept running, despite the pain. Eventually, running was hurting her too much, to the point that the knee pain and IT band pain progressed to other symptoms:

  • Her feet started to swell after running
  • She was starting to get weird foot itches
  • Her leg hair almost stopped growing
  • Eventually, it progressed into plantar fasciitis
  • After that, the pain made its way up to her lower back, and she was getting sciatica

Beyond the pain, the effects were far-reaching.

  • She dreaded something as simple as climbing her stairs at home. In fact, she describes climbing stairs as an “overwhelming and scary thought”
  • Sitting for longer than an hour made everything hurt
  • Walking for short distances became a problem
  • When she would have work events where she would have to stand with colleagues/clients for long periods of time, it would start to bother her

All in all, for someone in her late 30s, she felt really beaten up, and dreaded what life would be like in the future. As she stated in her video, if she felt this broken down now, what would she be like when she was 70?

What Jaime Has Tried in the Past

               As you can imagine, pain that you feel even when standing or sitting can be very uncomfortable, and even affect mental health. So Jaime has tried a lot of different things over the years to help her reduce/get rid of it.

               She’s tried:

  • Going to her GP for an ultrasound and blood work. There was nothing wrong.
  • Stretching. It didn’t work (you’ll find out later in this article why)
  • Physiotherapy. It helped alleviate symptoms a little bit, but it wasn’t really fixing the problem. And the relief only lasted for about an hour
  • Dieting, to lose weight, to take the pressure off her lower body
  • Running, also to lose weight

Despite that, none of these worked. And in fact, running made it worse. She was in progressively worse and worse pain for about 5 years before she started working with us.

Fortunately, Jaime’s no quitter, and despite many unsuccessful attempts at pain relief, she kept on looking, instead of resigning to just having to learn to “live with it.”

Around that time, I did a talk at Jaime’s husband’s work, and he came in for an assessment. He brought Jaime with him, and as I went through her initial assessment, and questioned her about her issues, what she’s done in the past, and how it worked, I became very enthusiastic, because I saw so many opportunities for improvement. To me, it was pretty clear why she was in chronic pain, and why past attempts haven’t worked.

If I believed that we couldn’t help her, and she was in pain despite doing everything right, I would have referred her elsewhere. Fortunately, I saw massive opportunity.

So I connected Jaime with her trainer, Jon, and Jon subsequently got to design, refine, and adjust her exercise program.

Around the gym, we call Jon “mobility master”, because he’s always stretching, mobilizing both himself and his clients. He was just the right person to match up Jaime with.

Jaime’s Exercise Program

               Once Jon met Jaime, he further identified what was weak, what was tight and what was dysfunctional.

               So here are some of the highlights of the program that Jon put Jaime on, along with the thought process behind it:

Breathing Drills

Jon noticed that Jaime’s breathing was dysfunctional (breathing function is assessed with location – stomach or chest, and frequency – how many breaths per minutes. It should be 12 per minute or less).

Breathing is a big “bang for the buck” kind of exercise, because it affects the body both mechanically, as well as neurologically. Plus you’re breathing all the time anyway, so you improve breathing, and the carryover is very significant.

Mechanically, if the breathing isn’t proper (more than 12 breaths per minute, and/or breathing into the chest too much), it tends to “shut off” the lower back muscles, along with the glutes, because of the way that the diaphragm interacts with the other core muscles.

Neurologically, there are nerves called “C fibres.” Their function is to carry information about environmental threats to the brain. The abdominal and chest wall have a disproportionately higher amount of C fibres compared to the rest of the body. So breathing incorrectly makes a person more sensitive to small pains, and they get amplified beyond what would mechanically make sense.

Isometrics, Eccentrics, and Range of Motion Drills

               If you don’t know what these are, let’s get some terminology out of the way, so we’re all on the same page:

  • Isometrics are when you hold a certain position (like a plank, for example)
  • Eccentrics are when you just lower the weight, without lifting it (so a partner/trainer lifts it for you. Or you lift a weight with your good side, and lower it with your bad side)
  • Range of motion drills mean starting a movement with a short range of motion, and adding motion as your strength improves in lengthened positions.

What was the point of all these drills? Tension development. One glaring, obvious factor that Jon thought was contributing to Jaime’s pain was the fact that she had length without strength. That is, she had range of motion that she couldn’t control in different joints and muscle, from her hamstrings, to her quads, and others.

So Jon simply didn’t let her “access” those ranges in training, unless she could control them. As she gained strength in lengthened positions, she was able to gain some joint stability, her pain decreased, and additional range opened up.

Hip Mobility

               Along with all the previous strategy, Jon noticed that Jaime had limited hip mobility. Part of that is due to inactive glutes, but in addition to that, there were certain range of motion limitations, that he needed to address.

               So he used a number of drills to improve Jaime’s hip mobility, and get her glutes firing again. The glutes are a very strong muscle. Or at least, they should be. But for desk-bound employees, they can “fall asleep.” What the glutes do is they extend your hip. They help you get off your chair/couch. They help you walk (every single step you take requires the glutes). But if the glutes aren’t working, other muscles have to pick up the slack. Namely, the hamstrings, and lower back.

               In Jaime’s case, those two were chronically overworking, and therefore, pulling her back and hips out of alignment.

               Once Jaime’s hip mobility and glute strength improved, it allowed the overworking muscles to rest a bit more.

Core Stability

               The core is meant to transmit force. It transmits force from the lower body to the upper body, and vice versa. Whatever you do that’s fairly active, the core is supposed to stiffen briefly, to keep your upper and lower body “together”, and then once you’re at rest, it should relax. Jaime’s core didn’t do that.

               So Jon used specific exercises and drills to improve her core stability. And it’s not quite as simple as just “tighten your core when you lift.” Ideally, proper core function happens reflexively – without thinking.

               And as you can see from Jaime’s glowing case study, it worked!

Challenges Along the Way

               Before you think it was a straight-line, simple path from pain to no pain, it wasn’t. We don’t live in a perfect world, and “life” happens. Here are some of the stumbling blocks that Jaime experienced:

  • Recurring tightness. As you can imagine, 5 years of tightness doesn’t just release all of a sudden. It takes consistent practice and relaxation to get the muscles to the right tone. So at first, Jaime would do a workout aimed at loosening up certain muscles, and after a day it tightened. After a while, it took 2 days for her muscles to tighten. Then a week, then a month, and now, it’s pretty infrequent. Just like you tune a piano, we “tuned” Jaime’s muscles.
  • Along with the tightness came pain. When the pain came, workouts would have to be modified.
  • Consistency. Jaime’s a busy professional, who lives in Vaughan, works in Mississauga, and exercises in Markham. So sometimes, fitting in scheduled workouts was a challenge, but as her results improved, so did her consistency.

How Her Life is Different Now

               Dramatically! Remember all those things that bothered Jaime?

  • Sitting or standing for long periods of time
  • Climbing stairs
  • Walking

Not anymore!

               Remember all those problems that she had that started with her knees and IT band, and progressed to other things, like:

  • Plantar fasciitis
  • Sciatica
  • Swollen feet
  • Itchy feet

All gone as well.

At this point, about the only time she feels any kind of pain is when she pushes too hard in a workout. Everything else, she can pretty much do pain-free.

And because she feels so good now, she wants to move more. Now that it’s covid, and she’s working from home more, she’s taken up hiking and cycling with her husband – activities that she would have dreaded just a year and a half earlier.

Oh, and as a bonus – she lost over 25 pounds!

All in all, we’re very proud of Jaime, and the progress that she’s made, and continues to make.

If Jaime’s story resonates with you, and you need help getting out of pain, that’s what our special program, “Pain-Free 1-2-3” is for. You can see if you qualify for that program by simply emailing me with the words “Pain-Free 1-2-3” in the subject line.