I wanted to start my career as a blogger with a big question.  The idea being to take the 10,000 foot view of the landscape before zooming in to the more specific issues and ideas that define you and I as physical human beings.  Most days, I feel the solutions to people’s physical challenges are pretty simple.  What I mean is that I can usually summarize why a person is struggling with a physical issue down to 4 or 5 points.  Although these points may be very specific in scope and unique to each person, they tend to be the same 4 or 5 limitations that cause the majority of the issues a particular person struggles with day to day.  The trick is, I only arrive at this conclusion after some creative analysis and problem solving.

So, in that vein, my question is:  Why do we get injured?

A simple question indeed.  In reality, there are hundreds of thousands of unique reasons we end up hurting ourselves.  Many different injuries with many different causes.  Although I see patterns in the people I treat day to day, it’s rare that 2 people end up with the same solution.  We’re all individuals after all and human variability is profound.  The reason you have noise in your knees when you squat is different from why I have noise in my knees when I squat.  Your low back pain is the result of tight hamstrings while mine is caused by a stiff mid and upper back.  Your hip hurts because your hip joint is stiff but mine hurts because of old lumbar disc injury.  I could go on but will spare you because I think you get the point.  Luckily, after helping people problem solve through their physical issues for the past 13 years, some interesting trends emerge that should help to guide us all in preventing bodily breakdown while improving physical performance.

Each of the next 5 blog posts will illuminate a new factor that’s just waiting to take you down.  So, pay attention and sit up tall with your butt squeezed while you read them!