The Low Back Pain That Started it All

Not to be cliche but in 2015, I, just like 619 million other people in the world, was experiencing low back pain. At 20 years old, I was a bit shocked - I was young, healthy, athletic, and yet had never experienced anything this debilitating. Toward the end of my first season playing collegiate rugby, I begged my squad's athletic trainer for answers. If 10% of the world's population experiences this then surely there must be solutions... right??

Rest. Ice (we'll talk about this later). Stretching. These helped with my pain temporarily, but did not feel like long-term solutions because I still did not understand why I was experiencing this pain or where it was coming from. I made an appointment with my primary care doctor to be seen, but instead of leaving the hospital feeling supported and cared for, I walked away with extra strength pain meds and a list of seemingly generic exercises with no explanations.

At this point I felt like maybe my pain wasn't real? Or at least not "real" enough to be taken seriously. I knew that what I was experiencing was common but I knew that it wasn't normal. It was time to take things in to my own hands.

You can only avoid pain for so long before it tackles the s$#* out of you