20 Mar Why You’re Not Healing From Your Back Pain
Article Rundown
- You’re not stuck—you’re rushing the process
- Pain-free doesn’t mean you’re fully healed
- Don’t abandon what got you out of pain
- Stay patient, build capacity, and play the long game
Why You’re Not Healing
Most people think healing is complicated. It’s not—it’s actually very simple. But simple does not mean easy. What I see over and over again is not a lack of knowledge or access to information; it’s people doing a few key things wrong for long enough that they stay stuck in the same cycle of pain, flare-ups, and frustration. The biggest issue is that they don’t respect the process. They try to rush it, skip steps, or abandon the exact things that were working for them in the first place.
I Don’t Live With Back Pain
Let me clear something up right away—I don’t live with back pain. I don’t manage it daily, and I’m not constantly working around symptoms. I’ve been pain-free since 2014, and that surprises a lot of people because they assume that since I teach back pain and work with it every day, I must still be dealing with it myself. The truth is, I learned the hard way what not to do. I tried to rush my recovery, I thought I could control the timeline, and I believed ten months would be enough. It wasn’t, and that mistake cost me.
You Can’t Rush Biology
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn is that you don’t get to dictate how fast you heal. Biology doesn’t care about your goals, your deadlines, or how bad you want to be back. Tissue healing takes time, adaptation takes time, and resilience is something you earn—not something you force. It took me 18 months to get back to competition readiness, not because anything failed, but because that’s how long it actually took when I stopped getting in my own way.
Pain-Free Doesn’t Mean Reckless
Just because you feel better does not mean you’re ready to do anything and everything. This is where most people mess it up—they get out of pain and immediately start chasing exercises they see online or pushing into ranges and loads they haven’t earned yet. If I wanted to hurt my back again, I could probably do a pretty good job by doing more of the wrong things more often with more load. Staying pain-free isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing the right things consistently and avoiding the things that got you hurt in the first place.
Don’t Abandon What Got You There
This is the biggest pattern I see as a McGill master clinician. Someone builds a solid foundation, gets out of pain, starts walking consistently, trains their core, and moves better than they have in years. Then, as soon as they feel good, they stop doing those exact things. They abandon the walking program, they drop the core work, and they replace it with something flashier that they saw online. A few weeks or months later, they’re right back in pain, wondering what went wrong. The answer is simple—they abandoned what got them there.
Respect the Process and Build Capacity
Phase one is always about building a pain-free foundation—walking, desensitization, and learning how to move properly. That foundation does not go away when you start feeling better or when you move into more advanced training. As you progress, you layer things in carefully, making sure the timing, volume, frequency, and exposure all match your current capacity. Most injuries and re-injuries happen when people exceed that capacity. They do too much, too soon, and cross a line their body wasn’t ready for.
The Trap Most People Fall Into
Most injuries don’t happen at the beginning—they happen when pain starts to go down. That’s when confidence spikes and patience disappears. You start feeling good, you think you’re ready, and your ego convinces you to push forward faster than you should. I fell into that exact trap about ten months into my recovery, and it set me back. That’s the moment where discipline matters most—when you feel better, but you’re not fully built yet.
Play the Long Game
The reason I’ve stayed pain-free since 2014 is that I stopped chasing short-term results and started playing the long game. I kept the same foundational habits that got me out of pain—walking, core work, smart training, and leaving something in the tank. I didn’t abandon them when I felt better; I doubled down on them. If you want to stay pain and symptom-free, you have to identify the cause, remove it, rebuild your capacity, and stick with what works, not for a few weeks or months, but for years.
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