Normal v. Natural

Categories: Blog Feb 25, 2015

To this day, it’s still a pleasant surprise - walking up and down steps - any steps - pain free. I guess it’s because I had hundreds of thousands of painful reps - maybe millions - who knows? At one point I stopped counting. Same thing with any exercise or activity that required me to bend my knees. Lunging. Check. Pain. Squatting. Check. Pain. Walking up, or worse yet, down a hill. Check. Pain.

So when the very first squat and the very first step had no pain, it was like a moment of noticeable silence in from the cacophony of noise in my head. It was… other-worldly.

I can’t describe what it feels like to live in and with constant and chronic pain. You either succumb to it or get on with life. I first started going to the doctor for knee pain when I was 14. Both knees screamed at me while running cross country as a freshman in high school. They hurt so bad, I had to stop. (Plus, sucking at running distance, while enduring knee pain wasn’t a great motivator either.) Then dislocating my right knee cap two weeks into wrestling practice my senior year, having my coach put it back in, and “walking it off” with an icepack and ACE bandage didn’t help either.

My first reprieve from chronic, daily, and at that point, excruciating knee pain was in January 2006. The thing that did it? Activating the vestibular system through lying on my back and rotating my head from the center to the right.

And then in 2010, when I started using Original Strength on a daily basis, was when I fully experienced the absence of knee pain for days on end. See, up until that point, knee pain was normal. It was something I tolerated, and ultimately, was part of everyday living.

It was not natural.

Unfortunately, for most people, there’s a difference between the two.

Normal is what you’re used to experiencing, doing, being.

Natural is what you’re supposed to experience, do, and be.

You’re not supposed to move and live with [chronic] pain.

It’s not supposed to be normal.

DISCLAIMER: At this point I need to explicitly state that if you have chronic or acute pain anywhere, go see your doctor. Once cleared for exercise by him or her, then engage in movements and activities that don’t hurt you or reproduce your pain. Original Strength is not intended to diagnose or treat pain or disease nor act as a substitute for medical advice or practice. It is intended to help you move more efficiently, which alleviates the body’s compensations and movement dysfunctions, which has empirically been shown to have the side effect of reducing/relieving pain.

You’re designed, created, to move freely, easily, effortlessly, on a whim, at a moment’s notice. You’re not supposed to have to foam roll, stretch, activate, or prep anything. You’re supposed to get up and move. Do whatever it is you want to [legally] do, whenever you want to do it.

So how do you get from “normal” to “natural?”

How do you get the two to line up so natural IS normal?

Simple.

Press Reset.

A lot.

How do you “press reset?”

One of three ways:

1. Diaphragmatic breathing


2. Activating the vestibular system


3. Engage in midline crossing or contralateral movement patterns

(Here’s more info on exactly what that would look like.)

How much is “a lot?”

Considering it’s incredibly easy to do, taking 5 minutes 2 or 3 times each day will help you make noticeable improvements almost immediately. And, like anything, the more you do it, the better you get.

Fortunately, pressing reset isn’t a skill that you have to learn. It’s more like running a computer program that needs to be re-booted or has to have virus protection software run on it to get rid of all the junk slowing it down. It’s restoring your body’s operating system back to it’s original state. Anybody can do it. And it’s easily accessible to everyone.

If you’ve been experiencing chronic pain, go get checked out by your doctor. Then, once cleared, press reset - a lot. Then normal will no longer be normal - natural will.

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