Most people think injuries happen because of that one rep.
One awkward pull.
One bad step.
One movement in particular.
One “I guess I tweaked it.”
But that’s not the truth.
That’s just the moment your body finally said:
“That’s enough.”
And if you’ve ever dealt with pain, shoulder, knee, back, hip, ankle, you know how frustrating it is because it doesn’t just affect workouts…
It affects life.
Sleeping. Sitting. Driving. Picking up your kid. Carrying groceries. Getting off the floor. Feeling like yourself.
So let’s talk about why pain actually happens in a simple way that makes sense to empower you and what you can do about it.
Because if you train long enough (and live long enough) this is something all of us will experience.
I promise and assure you this blog and information is worth its weight in gold.
My story (and why I care about this)
I’ve been coaching humans since 2012.
Along the way I noticed a pattern in people and our bodies, everyone usually has an area within their body or would come in with pain or something not feeling great.
And I wanted to learn why, how to better help people and create real solutions for them.
In 2017, I spent a weekend down in Long Island at a seminar with a company called Active Life.
They specialize in helping people understand and get out of pain.
My goal was to get better at one thing:
Helping people who are in pain.
Because pain is one of the biggest reasons people do not start or stop training.
And when people stop training, they don’t just lose fitness…
They lose confidence. Momentum. Hope. Freedom.
And pain robs you of not only joy and all those things, it robs you of life.
And even after all I learned in which I am about to share…
I still fell victim to this (before I understood it) and even after I understood it.
There were seasons where I stacked training volume on top of high levels of stress, ignored my recovery box not being ideal, “pushed through” the signals and warning signs and convinced myself I was fine, would be fine.
Until eventually my body said no more.
I lived in constant pain for about a year.
And I spent nearly $10-15k to try to get out of it (including, out of pocket doctors…I saw 5 different sports medicine doctors, healing peptides, flying down to Texas to do stem cells and about a dozen other short lived band-aid attempts to a bigger problem.)
I realized that “toughing it out” wasn’t a plan.
“Stretching more” wasn’t a plan.
“Taking a few days off” wasn’t a plan.
I needed a better plan and for me, that included a major shoulder surgery.
After multiple months of physical therapy, part of my rebuild was admitting something I now teach others:
If you want a different outcome, you usually need a different level of guidance.
So I invested in a coach.
I know a lot and I became my own problem. I needed to take myself out of the equation, be guided, be informed, a plan to follow and someone who would support me, answer my questions, pull me back in when my silly thinking began to drift.
For six months I worked with Dr. Ryan Summers (information below) and he didn’t just help me rebuild my shoulder and everything around it…
He rebuilt my understanding.
He re-shaped how I saw training. He helped me learn how to train intelligently, how to create adaptation, how to respect recovery, and how to build capacity the right way.
That experience made me smart, stronger and more importantly…
It made me a better coach.
Because I can support and serve people better when they’re in it.
This has had a large influence on my programming evolution.
I am glad I went through that journey, so hopefully others don’t have to and can learn from my mistakes and how I evolved from that in how we operate and program here.
The simplest framework that will help you and people understand pain is this:
Load vs. Capacity
The simplest way to understand pain: the Bucket
Think of your body like a bucket.
Capacity = the size of your bucket
Capacity is how much stress your body can handle right now before something breaks down.
This is not just strength, workouts or runs.
Capacity is also:
- how well you recover (stress, diet and sleep)
- how well you move (positions you are able to achieve easily or not so easily)
- Your functional diagnosis (what you CAN do)
- how well your body tolerates repeated stress
- Your anatomical dysfunctions (anatomy, non favorable things like herniated disc, torn meniscus, broken collarbone as a child etc)
- how much margin you have on a given week
And here’s the key:
Capacity is not fixed.
Some weeks your bucket is big.
Some weeks it’s smaller (poor sleep, work stress, travel, under-eating, life chaos).
Load = everything you pour into the bucket
Load isn’t just the weight on the bar in the gym.
It’s everything that stresses the system:
- training volume (how much you do) + intensity (the effort, duration, demand)
- extra workouts you add in (extra running, home workouts, other gyms)
- repetitive physical stress (lots of the same movement patterns, day to day, job demands)
- long workdays (manual labor OR sitting…both count)
- long drives / lots of sitting
- Emotional, psychological, personal stress
- poor sleep / disrupted sleep
- dehydration
- under-fueling
Pain often shows up when the bucket finally overflows.
The biggest mistake: blaming the last rep
When someone gets hurt they usually say:
“It happened during the workout.” “I felt it during the push press.”
And they’ll point to the “moment”:
- “the last set did it”
- “the final box jump lit my ankle up”
- “that last pull from the floor got my back”
- “I felt fine until that one rep…”
Yet most of the time…
That moment isn’t the full story.
It was the final pour into a bucket that was already close to full.
The straw that broke the camel’s back.
So if we want to prevent pain, solve it long-term, decrease its chances of showing up, we have to stop zooming in on the last rep…
and zoom out to the whole week, the bigger picture and realize how responsible we are for more than that last rep.
What’s already in your bucket when you wake up
You don’t start each day at zero.
You wake up with baseline stress already in the bucket.
Here are three big categories that fill it before you even train:
1) Your body’s history
Old injuries, surgeries, wear-and-tear, limitations, “that shoulder that’s never been the same.”
This is anything about your body that isn’t “ideal” or what it used to be:
- herniated disc
- torn labrum
- meniscus history
- rolled ankle history
- old shoulder stuff
- surgeries, fractures, etc.
Important: this is NOT a death sentence.
A ton of people have “findings” on imaging and live pain-free, strong lives.
Your history matters… but it usually isn’t what’s holding you back by itself.
This doesn’t mean you’re doomed.
It just means your body has a history and we coach with that in mind.
ALL of us have life mileage. And the older your age – the higher the miles!
2) Your recovery status (aka your recovery prioritization and habits)
Your Sleep. Nutrition. Hydration. Stress.
This is the “am I building up or breaking down?” category.
Two people can do the same workout…
and one feels amazing while the other gets lit up…
because one person’s bucket started the day half full.
3) Your movement options + control
This is the coaching lens:
- can you get into positions well?
- can you control them?
- can you express strength there?
- do you compensate to get the job done?
When control or range is missing, the body borrows from somewhere else.
Borrowing adds load.
Then life happens (and the bucket fills fast)
Now stack in:
- house stuff
- work stress
- Life stress
- Newborn not sleeping
- Parenting challenges
- long hours sitting or standing
- long drives
- Someone in your family passes away, you lose a beloved pet,
Then you show up to workout…
Feel fine on the bike, you feel okay during kettlebell swings then suddenly your shoulder starts to hurt during pull-up.
Or their knee “randomly” starts talking or feeling an uncomfortable sensation during lunges…
And the story becomes:
“That pullups or the lunges are the problem.”
Or
“I am getting old.”
Or
“My knees hurt now.” Which usually leads people to I’m afraid to make it worse so they create fear stress, stop coming…
But the real story is:
The total load exceeded current capacity.
And they don’t need to stop, live in fear, in this exceeding capacity we need to reduce the load of what’s being poured in.
A lot of that we can control and are personally responsible for.
Why “just stop doing that exercise” is such a bad deal
This is where a lot of people get stuck.
They go to a doctor and say:
“I did pull-ups and now my shoulder hurts.”
And the common advice becomes:
“Don’t do pull-ups.” “Don’t go to the gym for x weeks.”
And look, most doctors are trying to do no harm.
But the result is a terrible trade-off:
You now have to choose:
- do the things you want to do
or - stay out of pain
That’s a lousy way to live.
Because the “things you want to do” aren’t just workouts…
They’re life.
- hobbies
- vacations
- recreation
- playing with your kids
- carrying groceries because you can
- Putting on your socks and not having someone have to do that for you
- taking out the garbage
- being able to say “yes” to normal human stuff
So instead of just banning movements forever, we need a better approach.
This education can re-shape how you think and see it all – if you ALLOW it.
The two-part solution: clean up load + build capacity
Staying out of pain and performing well is a two-pronged approach.
Prong 1: Reduce unnecessary baseline load
This means improving what we can control inside those “wake up loads.”
- Stress / diet / sleep:
You don’t have to be perfect, but improving sleep hygiene, eating enough protein, reducing sugar, processed foods, increasing vegetables, fruits, hydrating, and better managing stress response can dramatically lower the load in the bucket. - Functional diagnosis:
Coaching matters here. Improving mobility where you need it, building control, and strengthening the positions you’re asking your body to hit. - Anatomical history:
Your injury history isn’t automatically the problem, but we coach around it intelligently.
If you reduce these baseline loads, you wake up with more room in the bucket.
Prong 2: Raise the capacity line
This is the part people forget:
Even if you “clean everything up”… you still have wants and needs in life.
So we don’t just shrink the load. We also increase capacity.
This is the purpose of training done well:
To intentionally and deliberately create favorable adaptation…
so your capacity goes up.
We stress the system (smartly), recover, adapt, and then:
Your bucket gets bigger.
You wake up with more margin.
More buffer.
More freedom.
More “I can handle life and still feel good.”
And I don’t know about you…
I’d rather be the person with a bigger bucket.
Recipes for Disaster #1 – Overtraining
This is why if someone were training all 7 days a week with no real recovery usually ends the same way.
Overtrained, under recovered and aspects of your body hurt.
Not because you’re weak. Because the bucket never drains.
I get it, I love training, the energy shift, mental boost, feeling accomplished and the challenge too as much as anyone – and here’s 2 questions to sit with if your going 7 days a week.
What if you’d perform and feel better with 2 full days off? What would that do for you?
What are you escaping from?
Recipes for Disaster #2- Mixing Programs
And it’s also why mixing gyms can get people into trouble:
If you tax your shoulders here…
then hit shoulders again somewhere else tomorrow…
and you’re stressed, under-slept, and under-fueled…
That’s a slippery slope.
Not because shoulder work is bad.
Because the bucket is overflowing.
*I am not saying don’t visit your friends or other gyms if that’s what you do – I am simply educating you to have awareness and bring that with you to train smarter if you do.
The mistakes people make that keep pain sticking around:
1) They chase perfect form like it’s a cure
Yes, form matters. We coach it for a reason.
But pain usually isn’t solved by a single cue.
2) They treat mobility or stretching like the solution to everything
Mobility and stretching are support not the whole answer.
Mobility without load management and capacity building is like mopping the floor while the sink is overflowing.
3) They rest until it “feels better”… then go right back to the same plan
Pain goes down → you return to full volume/intensity → pain comes back.
That’s not bad luck.
That’s the same equation repeating.
4) They ignore “outside the gym” variables
Sleep, stress, fueling, hydration, life load.
Those aren’t side notes. They’re part of the bucket.
5) They keep it quiet until it’s a full-blown problem
If you tell us early, we can adjust small things and keep you training.
If you wait 3–6 weeks, it usually takes longer to unwind.
What actually builds capacity?
Capacity grows when we do two things consistently:
- Recover well
- Progress exposure intelligently
Here are the big rocks that increase the size of the bucket:
Recovery habits
- deep sleep
- rest days
- walking / easy sessions
- stretching / mobility (as support)
- eating enough (especially protein)
- hydration
- stress management
Training habits (build the bucket bigger)
- progressive strength (gradual, smart)
- aerobic base work (huge for recovery capacity)
- controlled reps + tempo
- accessories that target missing pieces
- consistency over intensity spikes
The Coaching takeaway: there are only two levers
When load exceeds capacity, there are only two levers:
1) Reduce unnecessary load
Not “do nothing forever.”
But reduce what’s unnecessary right now:
- drop volume
- reduce intensity
- shorten range of motion
- swap a movement temporarily
- slow tempo
- shift stimulus (bike instead of run, DB instead of barbell, etc.)
2) Increase relevant capacity
This is the long-game win.
We assess what’s missing… then build it.
That’s coaching.
If you want this to get better… doing nothing usually won’t do it.
Here’s the truth in a loving way:
Doing nothing rarely solves pain long-term.
Symptoms calm down… then you go back to “normal”… and it returns.
Because if the bucket is still overflowing, the equation hasn’t changed.
Also important:
Group classes are amazing…AND they likely won’t create the solution to a specific pain problem (they didn’t for me) that’s why I had to step out of them for months.
Group classes are fun. They build a broad fitness and shared experience with connection and camaraderie.
But if you have a specific issue (reoccuring shoulder pain, knee pain, low back pain, “this one position always gets me”)…
You usually need:
- individualized assessment
- precise progressions
- and a plan that builds your missing capacity
What we want for you at Railroad
I want you training for the duration of life.
Not just “getting through today.”
That means when something hurts we don’t just ask:
“What movement caused it?”
We think and encourage you to as well:
- how full is your bucket right now?
- what’s been poured in all week?
- what can we reduce today?
- what do we need to build over the next 6–12 weeks?
Because most pain is not a mystery.
It’s an equation.
And the equation can be changed.
If you need support – ask
If you’re a current member and something is bothering you, don’t sit on it for weeks.
If you’re in group class and have a specific pain it’s likely it won’t get solved there (mine didn’t) and you’ll adjust and adjust and adjust yet if it’s not getting better you may need a temporary pivot to solve a specific problem.
Talk to us.
Email us at info@railroadcrossfit.com and tell us:
- what you feel / what hurts / for how long ?
- what movements bother / trigger it
- what you’ve tried
- How serious are you at getting out of pain?
- What’s your availability
We’ll help you, create a plan with you, one that keeps you moving, keeps you progressing, and doesn’t require you to “quit the things you love.”
And for those reading who are not a member but pain has taken things from you (strength, confidence, activities, freedom)…
We can help you.
Book a consult at www.railroadcrossfit.com.
We start with a no stress conversation.
And that conversation alone often changes people’s lives because clarity is powerful…and a real plan is even better.
For more resources and support:
Watch a video on load versus capacity here:
Dr Ryan Summers of Valvo Health
Local Support to Hudson New York
Lee Physical Therapy
Katrina Lee https://lptwellness.com/physical-therapy/