The Route to Finally Overcome Chronic Pain & Injury
I was sitting in the waiting area. Waiting for my turn with the physio.
The 5th expert in a row I had gone to. The best I could find.
I was working for a couple of years now and had started to invest a lot of money to try and fix my body.
It didn’t seem like a big deal when I was younger and could just ignore the tightness/stiffness/pain and play through it.
But now at 25, it had kept getting worse to the point where I would give anything to just get my Physical Freedom back.
Price was not an issue. Nor was time & effort. I would do ANYTHING. Whatever it takes.
From being an ‘athlete’ for most of my childhood, playing numerous sports and flying it. To sitting here at 25 feeling like the tin man, not able to do the things I love anymore.
At my lowest points I couldn’t even:
- Iron more than 3 shirts
- Get a 2 hour train
- Stand for more than 20 mins
Without some form of tightness/stiffness/pain. In my back, my hips, my knees, my neck.
This isn’t how I thought my life would go. How have I ended up here?!
I didn’t think this would happen until you were in your 60s. Not in your mid 20s. When I should be coming into the prime athletic years of my life!!!
My turn is called.
I’m in to see the physio I have been working with for months now.
Up on the table for my usual table test for my hips. Its still agony when she test some positions.
I have a high pain threshold and would do anything to get back to where I need to be. But even she could see how I would mask the pain to let her push my hips into certain positions.
And it was still basically the same as when I started.
Some other markers had shown improvement. But I’m still in chronic pain. I’m still feeling like the tin man.
I still don’t have my Physical Freedom back.
Before this I had gone to:
- Santry Sports Clinic and the Doctor of the Irish Rugby team saw me.
- I’d been to a well known and vastly experienced osteopath in Dublin for 8 years
- I’d been to chiropractors.
- I’d been to other physios and doctors.
What was the result from all the experts?
Just mainly given diagnosis of what was ‘wrong’ with my body.
And solutions for these ‘diagnosis’, which never worked for me.
I’d racked up 4 different diagnosis of whats ‘wrong’ with my hips and my back so far.
Now that I am at the best physio I can find (lectures in a university, physio to a national Irish team too)…..surely she will be the one to fix me!!!
I had hope.
I don’t know where to go or what to do if this doesn’t work.
I felt like I had tried everything and paid everyone.
She began moving my hips around again and asked me why I want to get back to the level I was at beforehand.
“I just want to be able to do whatever I want with my body again! I just started Jiu-Jitsu and I love it, but my back and hips are sore during and after every class, so I can’t really go. I’m worried I won’t be able to walk when I’m older. I’m trying to train in the gym too but the same issue. I have chronic pain and just keep getting injured and can’t progress”
“I love training in general and just want to do everything. I even want to take the mobility to higher levels in the future and get things like the splits!!”
This is the point where she laughed and then caught herself, as she could see I was being deadly serious. I wasn’t joking.
Her face turned to a look of pity: “I’m sorry Mark, but the splits are impossible for your hips. So I wouldn’t try that”.
I said nothing. But I was boiling underneath.
If I have to hear another thing I CAN’T do from another healthcare professional, they might not live to see the next morning.
We test a few more movements and then we sit down to talk.
She has all her notes ready, maybe there is some good news!
Maybe now after these few months she knows more about how to help me! I won’t give up on this!!!
“After all the things you told me around the back pain, hip pain, knee pain, neck pain, things are becoming clearer now”
“You have scoliosis”
“Your spine curves to the left, and this leads to you weight bearing down your left side more than your right. This is why you have the back pain, this is why your left hip is worse and why your left knee is the one with issues”
“If I found you at 15, we could have managed the scoliosis and worked on it. But at 25 now you are a fully grown man. There is nothing you can do now, I’m sorry”.
“It’s time to settle now Mark”.
“Your body isn’t able to do certain things anymore”.
“I would recommend taking up swimming. It’s easy on the body and would help you to keep your current level of mobility”
……………..ANOTHER diagnosis of what’s wrong with my body?! (a 5th one)……..
…..time to SETTLE?! at F***ING 25?!
I should be in my prime!!!!! I have so many things I want to do!!!!!
What am I going to do now?! Take up f***king chess?! Along with my weekly water polo class with the eldery yeah?!
This is f***king BULLSHIT.
Obviously I said none of these things out loud. She was a nice, caring woman.
And I could see she was genuinely trying to help me.
I can’t remember what I said. I placated her and I left.
I got the elevator down to reception. I don’t even know what I was thinking.
This was my last big hope of coming back. I don’t know what to do now. Where to go. Whether to laugh or cry.
I remember telling my ex girlfriend at the time what happened. Her caring for me and expecting me to be really upset.
She knew more than anyone how it was affecting me.
Lets just say basic levels of mobility are required for more than just sports.
I still remember how I would have to lie on the bed for 10 mins after. Staring at the ceiling waiting for the pain I had been blocking out to take over.
As you will find out: chronic pain will seep into every area of your life if you don’t address it.
It starts with affecting your sports. But it goes all the way into your day to day life and intimate relationships.
But the time for tears were over. I wasn’t sad. I was ANGRY.
That moment has stuck with me to this day. That was my rock bottom.
Little did I know, this moment would create the savage I am today.
The catalyst for the Don’t Settle Attitude that has got me amazing progress across body, mindset & life over the last 5 years.
That was the day things finally started to change for me.
The day I said f**k the healthcare route, I’m going to sort this out MYSELF. MY OWN WAY.
Because this just isn’t good enough.
10 years. 10 YEARS I’ve tried this healthcare route. Back from when I got my first knee injury at 15.
And what do I get after this 10 years? After all this time, effort & thousands spent?
Told to settle??? Retire from things I love at 25?! F**k off.
I left that building without a clue of what I was going to do next.
But I knew one thing: I wasn’t going to settle for this.
This isn’t how my story ends.
This was the start of my journey to regaining my Physical Freedom once and for all.
The catalyst that changed my life forever.
There Is No ‘Fix’
Everybody wants to be free from chronic pain.
Everyone want to have physical freedom to do all the things they enjoy.
Everyone wants to keep their physical freedom as they age. For themselves and their future family.
We don’t consciously think about this, but that is what we want in terms of our body.
Nobody want’s to be crippled with chronic pain and not able to do things they love.
Not able to play with their kids/grandkids.
Nobody wants to be stuck in a chair by 50.
One of the biggest problems is that we don’t worry about this because we think we can be ‘fixed’.
We are fooled by misinformation on how our body works.
We are so used to:
- Getting our phone fixed/buying a new one
- Getting our laptop fixed/buying a new one
- Getting our car fixed/buying a new one
That we somehow think it’ll be the same with our body.
You can replace your phone, laptop, or car. But you only get one body.
“It’s amazing how many decreasing assets we happily pay for and how many impactful assets we refuse to buy” – Justin Welsh
The irony is that we focus all our money on things that can easily be replaced, without investing in our most important asset.
The one we can’t replace: our own body. Our vehicle for life.
Our physical freedom.
Chronic pain is so prevalent now that if you don’t have back pain at some point in your life, you are the anamoly. Not the other way around.
Modern life negatively affects our mobility. Our environment is the invisible hand that shapes our body.
It will catch up with everyone at some point.
It’s a ticking time bomb.
People don’t understand this. That they are slowly edging closer towards losing their physical freedom.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Until you hit the moment where all those (negative) small gains have added up to the (negative) big gain.
And you lose your Physical Freedom. Living with regret, wishing you prioritised your Physical Freedom sooner.
That’s why I do this.
That’s why I made my passion for helping people regain their Physical Freedom my career.
Because I don’t want you to go through what I did.
I’m using my past pain and turning it into other future progress.
And that makes it all worthwhile for me.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Common Advice (Treating Symptoms over the Root Causes)
When we do get the first signs of losing our physical freedom, we start to slowly take more of an interest.
This is when we turn to the mainstream and ‘common advice’.
Which is all based around ‘fixing’ the issue (which as you’ll see below is a flawed approach from the start that will never work).
We are told to:
- Foam roll & stretch (not scientifically backed or effective)
- Go to chiropractor/osteopath/doctor/physio for the fix (wrong approach – treating symptoms not the root cause)
- Take painkillers/supplements etc (treating symptoms again)
Then when things aren’t getting better over the years of trying these things, we are told to settle like I was.
That we won’t be able to do the things we love anymore.
BULLSHIT.
Your body isn’t f**ked. It’s just not CURRENTLY prepared for the sports & activities you love to do.
This is misinformation stemming from self limiting beliefs.
It’s a lack of understanding around how the human body actually works.
If you are thinking “how can an ‘expert’ be wrong”, it’s time to start thinking about what an ‘expert’ really is.
Of all the people you went to trying to regain your physical freedom:
- How many of them had high levels of physical freedom?
- How many of them suffered from chronic pain so much that they would do anything on this earth to overcome it it?
- How many of them understand what it’s like having your physical freedom taken away from you?
- How many of them understand the attitude and approach it takes to get it back and KEEP it long term?
I think back to my own journey:
- The osteopath I went to for 8 years was overweight and probably couldn’t even touch his toes.
- The physio obviously was nowhere near doing something like the splits, based on what she told me.
- Other healthcare experts I went to clearly didn’t suffer from chronic pains themselves from the lack of empathy around the issue.
Things started to become clear for me. Hindsight is always 20/20 eh?
My Advice (Follow the Results)
There is a big difference between ‘book smart’ and ‘real life experience’.
The best is to have both of course, which is why I learn and train nearly every day.
But most ‘experts’ we go to are just book smart, and don’t have the life experience.
They haven’t gone from rock bottom with chronic pain giving up what they love, to overcoming it and achieving high levels of physical freedom. Along with proof of bringing many others through the same process.
If you wanted to get rich and had the following 2 options, which would you choose?
- Go to Johnny (the esteemed lecturer) who did a 4 year course on how to ‘become rich’. But still works in his 60k lecturing job and hasn’t reached financial freedom himself
- Go to Barry down the road who has no formal education, but he has a mansion, 2 ferrari’s and a lambo out the front, with a holiday home in Marbella. He has the financial freedom to live life on his own terms.
For 10 years I went to the likes of Johnny.
The last 5 years I’m going to all the Barrys I can find accross body, mindset & life.
And I’ve got more progress in the last 5 years than the previous 20.
That’s my experience. You make your own choice.
My advice when I am asked about anything is: follow the results
Because that’s all we actually want.
That’s all you really care about if you think deeply on it.
Two things happened which completely shattered the ‘illusion of the expert’ for me:
- I went to 5 ‘experts’ and they all diagnosed me with a DIFFERENT problem. Not even two diagnosis were the same. Like throwing darts at a board
- When a coach with no ‘formal education’ helped me with my chroinc back pain of 10 years more than all the most qualified doctors/osteopaths/physios I had gone to combined
That’s the day I finally saw the bigger picture.
The day I realised how naive I had been all my life up to now.
Treating the ‘experts’ like gods sent down from another planet to educate us mere mortals.
Hanging on their every word like it was the truth set in stone.
I realised that all ANYONE (including me) can offer you is their opinion based on their education & experience.
People have different education, and people have different experiences. Hence they will give different opinions.
This explained how I could go to 5 ‘experts’ and get 5 different diagnosis (opinions) of what’s wrong with me.
They weren’t the death sentence I thought they were.
Years later I see Usain Bolt has worse scoliosis than me. Google it.
Not only is he ‘not settling’, he’s the fastest man alive.
Your Attitude & Approach Determines Your Progress
“Success is determined by your ability to organise yourself around a variable in as many ways as possible – to pursue that variable not only with tenacity but with intelligent strategy – and for a long time” – Devin Kelley
The starting points don’t matter. It’s your attitude & approach that will determine your progress.
This line was one of my many insights along my journey from tin man to physical freedom.
We can use a simple car analogy to illustrate this:
- Your attitude is the fuel
- Your approach is the GPS
One without the other is futile. You need both to get to your destination.
Once I cultivated the don’t settle attitude, I only had half of the equation.
Like a car with unlimited fuel going around in circles and never getting where I want.
When I paired this attitude with the ‘follow the results’ over doctorates and degrees strategy, now I had the second half.
Now I had the GPS, so the fuel could start to move me in the right direction.
That’s when I finally got on the right path.
It led me to regain my Physical Freedom, and do things with my body that I was literally told were ‘impossible’ for me.
Think about it: The ‘mainstream’ information is for the average person.
And what results do the ‘average’ person get? Average.
Not just for your body, but for anything else in life.
Follow the general advice in the mainstream for your body, mindset & life, and you’ll end up:
- Feeling like the tin man
- Anxious and stressed
- On the 9-5 hamster wheel with no purpose
For those who want to stick to the ‘experts’ advice, stop reading.
For those who are open minded and want to follow the results, keep going.
Let’s dive into the 3 steps I would tell younger Marcus.
When he was 20 and had just enough pain to do something about it, but he was knee deep in the healthcare route thinking he would be fine.
This newsletter would have saved him 5 more years of pain and heartbreak.
It can do the same for you.
3 Steps To Regaining Your Physical Freedom
1) Lifestyle Change
This is one of the main reasons you can’t overcome your chronic pain & improve the quality of your life.
If I asked you what you would rather have at 60:
- a healthy body and your physical freedom, but you are gummy joe with no teeth. You have dentures
- a crippled body in a wheelchair with no physical freedom, but you have pearly white teeth
Every single person I have asked that question to (from clients to friends, to people on my social media platforms) the answer is always the same:
“Physical freedom”.
And here’s how the conversation always goes:
Me: “That’s whay you SAY you want. But your priorities are shown by your ACTIONS not your words”
“Compare how you look after your body to how you look after your teeth. You do nothing to look after your body for most of your life, then years later when issues start to arise you go to someone to get it fixed”
“You get the ‘fix’ and are a bit better. But then you still don’t prioritise your body daily and more issues arise in the future. And then you go back for the fix again”
“You repeat this loop for years/decades until you lose your physical freedom and can’t do things you love anymore. You don’t understand where you went wrong. You think it’s something to do with YOU specifically and your body”
“So you believe the experts and you settle”
“If you used this approach for your teeth that would be like never brushing your teeth, then after 10 years your teeth are black and starting to fall out and you are like hmmmm something must be wrong”
“So you go to the dentist and ask him to fix your teeth. You aren’t sure what happened but they aren’t in good condition and you need him to fix them”
“What do you think the dentist would say to you?
Them: “………….ehhh yeah I guess he’d be like what did you expect to happen? Since you don’t brush them and look after them”
Me: “Exactly. He’d be like what did you expect to happen?! Of course they are going to end up like this if you don’t prioritise them”
“And even if somehow the dentist could just snap his fingers and you had a full set of white teeth again, what would happen?”
“You would be back to him in another 5 to 10 years in the exact same position, because you only addressed the symptoms and not the root cause. You haven’t learned anything about how to actually get long-term progress”
I hope the penny has dropped.
The last person I explained this to recently, literally stared into the distance as his eyes opened.
“Holy shit man……..that analogy was amazing. That makes so much sense”
And that’s exactly how I felt when I followed the results and came accross this eye-opening analogy.
Why did nobody explain it to me like this when I was younger?!
I care about my body more more! I’d have prioritised my body the same way!
But I had to face reality, just like you do now:
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the 2nd best time is today.
You brush your teeth twice a day without fail.
You are PROACTIVE with your teeth and REACTIVE with your body.
If you don’t change this now going forward and prioritise your body atleast to the same level as your teeth (5-10 mins daily), just forget about it.
Seriously. You’re pissing in the wind.
I’ve never heard someone say “oh yeah I dropped off brushing my teeth there the last month, just didn’t have time”
But you hear excuses about how people didn’t have time for their body daily.
Ironic eh? Now you know better.
The first step is aligning your intentions with your actions.
Brushing your joints daily just like you do with your teeth.
This is the first step of regaining your Physical Freedom long-term.
I still do my daily mobility routine to this day, 5 years later.It’s part of my life.
Once you experience what its like to look after your body and how much better it can feel, NOT doing your daily mobility feels weird.
It feels like those days when you can’t brush your teeth because you were away and forgot your toothbrush.
Clients tell me and I remember the feeling myself too.
Modern life negatively affects our body just like it does our teeth.
If you don’t fight back against it, your future self will suffer the consequences.
2) Perspective Change
The second step is to start changing your perspective with your body.
You are going to treat it like a relationship going forward.
You are going to ‘listen to your body’. Just like you would with a partner, family member or friend.
Let’s dive deeper into this analogy so you can see the power of this perspective change.
In step 2 we have to face a harsh truth:
Your body would divorce you if it could.
If you had a partner and ignored all the signals they were trying to tell you, how would that relationship be?
After a few days, weeks, months, years, decades?
They would of course grow even more annoyed and eventually explode at you and leave.
And rightly so.
It’s not random, it all happened for a reason.
It’s the same for the relationship with your body, as it is for the relationship with your partner.
If you don’t listen to your body when it whispers, you will have to put it with it scream.
And this screaming manifests as chronic pain & injury.
We know that if we:
- ignore our partner
- treat them like shit
- don’t even make the time to actually understand them and whats going on
……then that relationship is doomed.
It’s the exact same for your body.
You probably don’t even know the reason WHY your brain makes you tight & stiff over time.
(To protect you. Tightness & pain is protective not destructive)
You never listened and did what was necessary to take back control yourself, so your brain had to do it for you.
The path forward is the same for both.
We need to LISTEN.
You need to start cultivating a relationship with your body if you want to improve this relationship long term.
And that’s why ‘Listen to Your Body ‘ is one of the first education modules I assign you in the education hub of the Physical Freedom Program.
Over time you will:
- Listen to your body and know how to manage it
- Be able to interpret different signals and what they mean
- Understand your body more than anyone else ever could
The way out is through YOU, not relying on some ‘expert’ forever.
Going to an expert expecting them to ‘fix you’ and get you your Physical Freedom back long term, is the same as treating your partner like shit for 10 years and expecting a marriage counsellor to fix your marriage in a few sessions.
Even if he somehow could erase time and all her memories, what would happen?
You would be back in the honeymoon phase.
But since you learned nothing from the quick fix, you would treat her the SAME WAY AS BEFORE.
And you would inevitably go back to the brink of divorce again over time.
It’s laughable isn’t it?!
When it’s actually just explained logically to us and we can see massive flaws in the mainstream approach.
We can see how it was never going to work.
Listen to your body going forward:
- Treat it well (Prioritise it daily. Links to step 1: Lifestyle Change)
- Listen & interpret the signals (Links to step 3: Educational Change)
- Show it that you care
- Give your body the love it needs (focusing on the right program for your current movement limitations)
You can see how all the 3 steps interlink with each other. They are all connected.
It should be getting a lot clearer now.
You know what you need to do.
And YOU have the control over this.
We all have so much more control than we think over our body, mindset & life.
My body wanted to divorce me years ago at 25. I had lost my Physical Freedom.
But now years later after working on the relationship with my body and treating it as my NUMBER 1 PRIORITY, I’m back in the honeymoon phase.
I regained my physical freedom and I’m doing things never thought possible for me.
We still argue the odd time, but now I listen. And treat it as I should.
Now its your turn to do the same.
Work back towards that great relationship you had with your body when you were a kid.
That’s our step 2 of perspective change.
Why is this so important?
Because perspective change leads to behaviour change.
And behaviour change is what leads to a different outcome.
I still use this principle of listening to my body daily. Training towards higher level strength goals like the one arm chin up for example.
I know:
- What a small niggle is that I can train trough
- What a potentially worse one is so I stop
- My limits
And the list goes on.
I know my body better than any ‘expert’ ever could. And now I’m doing things most people can’t.
Building this relationship with my body has been an integral part of this.
3) Educational Change
Education is key for any long term change.
Learning about how your body actually works is the 3rd leg of the tripod.
You know what’s ironic?
I went down the healthcare route because I was
- Tight & stiff
- In chronic pain
And what was I NEVER taught by any of the ‘experts’?:
- Why we get tight & stiff
- What pain actually is
It’s clear when I look back on my journey.
The healthcare model does not empower you to look after yourself
They hand out fish instead of teaching us how to fish for ourselves.
Do you want to truly be empowered, regain your physical freedom, and know how to keep it long term by yourself?
Then you need to understand some fundamental principles of how your body works.
You won’t understand how to drive a car without some basic knowledge of how it works, and it’s the same for the body.
You don’t need to learn everything but you do need to know the basics.
Why do you think I give out so much information? Because this is what people NEED.
If it was all about the exercises, then we’d all be moving around like ballerinas already.
They are all on instagram, youtube etc already.
You don’t pay a coach for information, you pay them for implementation.
If someone gave me the information on how to build rockets, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to.
It’s a start, but I’d still need some guidance and coaching through the process.
The irony is that we know more about our phones, laptops, cars, etc than we do about our own body. But its time to change that now.
I’ll list 2 topics below to get you started:
- The actual reason you are tight & stiff
- What pain is and how to manage it
Empowerment is the goal
Without the 3 pillars of:
- Lifestyle Change
- Perspective Change
- Educational Change
You will never fully take back control of our body. You will never regain your Physical Freedom.
The goal of all this on a higher level is to emPOWER you. Empowerment is when you feel POWERful.
When you are able to look after your own body going forward in life, and know how to prepare it for the things you love to do.
My goal is to teach you how to fish. So you can feed yourself and pass on the knowledge to help others learn how to fish too.
The end goal for all my clients is for them to not need me anymore, whether that takes 3 months or 3 years.
I am proud to say that some clients in the Physical Freedom Program have gone on to become coaches afterwards due to the extensive knowledge in the program.
An important thing to understand is that:
Empowerment doesn’t rely on external factors.
This is true for your body, mindset & life.
I stopped relying on the external and I cultivated the internal.
From the person who used to rely on others for everything, I have now taken back control of it all.
I have gone from:
- Chronic pains & injuries and giving up things I love
- Anxious, stressed, embarassed, no confidence, wearing a mask
- Working 9-5s I had zero passion for
To:
- Mobile, fit, strong body that can do anything I want. Splits, handstand pushups, nearly one arm chin ups and I’ve ran an untrained marathons in barefoot shoes.
- Calm, peaceful mind that enables me to be my true authentic self and overcome anything. Be the change I want to see in this world
- Turned passion to career and designed the life I want
That’s why I coach people in these 3 areas:
- Physical Freedom
- Mental Freedom
- Lifestyle Design
As these were 3 areas I suffered with for the majority of my life, and I didn’t settle until I found out how to overcome them.
Regaining freedom in these 3 areas has changed my life forever. And I want to pass on this gift to as many people as I can.
The truth is that:
- Relying on healthcare practitioners to fix you, will never give you physical freedom
- Relying on therapy (or other outlets) to fix you, will never give you mental freedom
- Relying on the 9-5 rat race for passion & purpose, will never give you the lifestyle design that you want.
So I’m here for those who want to take back control of their body, mindset and life.
For those who don’t want to settle for where they are now.
For those who want to small gain their way towards their potential.
The road after the red pill
Now that your eyes are opened.
Now that you know the truth about the path to regaining your Physical Freedom, it’s up to you what to do from here.
With new information and awareness comes freedom.
The freedom to choose.
The freedom to pave a new path forward for yourself.
Some people roll over and accept their ‘fate’. I’m the type who has to go out on my sword.
I don’t let other’s opinions determine my destiny.
I don’t settle, and I small gain my way towards where I want to be in life. And you can too.
You can live life by default or you can live life by design.
We can only make this choice for ourselves.
Physical Freedom Program
For those who don’t want to settle anymore and are ready to regain their Physical Freedom.
You can join the coaching application list below and I will be in touch to arrange a free consultation call.
Physical Freedom Program
You will see loads of client testimonials at the bottom of the program page.
It will show you what’s possible when you don’t settle.
My goal is to build an army of people who don’t want to settle.
Educate & coach them on how to overcome chronic pain & injury to reach their athletic potential.
The Don’t Settle Squad gets bigger each year.
It would be my pleasure to help you regain your physical freedom and join them.
Don’t Settle,
Mark