One week ago I purchased a gym membership. I figured since I have quite a bit of free time I should improve my physical health. Easier said than done.

I started out with a friend helping me out to schedule in the traditional exercises:

• Dynamic stretching
• Squats
• Bench Press
• Rows
• Lat pull down
• Leg extensions/curls
• etc.

The problem here is that I seemed to have forgotten the reason I stopped working out in the first place. It hurts. And I'm not talking about feel-the-burn no-pain-no-gain kind of hurting. I'm talking about constant shoulder pain stemming from multiple injures over the last decade or more.

To start, I'm 6 foot 3 inches and my pant length is 32 inches. Essentially a higher ratio of my body length resides in my core. I have a really long back and it creates a lot of weird posture issues.

I think it all began over a decade ago. I was playing World of Warcraft all day every day for months on end. Addiction as a coping mechanism for depression at its finest. It was during this time that I would get so tired of sitting in a chair that I would often start kicking my legs up to the left side onto my bed. This would relieve a lot of the pressures I was feeling from being in the sitting position for so long.

So, if you can imagine it, my legs are kicked up three feet onto a bed around chest level, and a lot of the weight of my body is all falling onto my right hip flexor. This awkward position moved my entire pelvis out of alignment, and that alignment has never been corrected. When I push on my lower back dimples to find the pelvis, the right side sticks out much more aggressively than the left.

Fast forward years later, I picked up another video game addiction via Guitar Hero. The time I burned on this game wasn't nearly as bad as WOW, but the damage done was arguably much worse. Essentially moving my elbow forward and rounding my right shoulder forward while strumming this fake guitar fucked me up pretty bad.

The two injuries are clearly linked, because when I engage my glutes to deactivate my hip flexors, I can feel a lot of the stress from my shoulder and rotator cuffs disappear.

I gotta say, after getting a gym membership and actually having the willpower to use it to the fullest, it was downright crippling to realize that I'm not even able to do the movements and training that I came there for.

The worst part about it is that the pain (more like severe annoyance) comes in a delayed reaction. I can do all the exercises without any problems at all, but 24-48 hours later it hits me like a ton of bricks and it's all I can think about.

I thought about quitting entirely. This is my life now. I just have to deal with the light pain I have now and try continue on sitting in this chair and keep working on my projects. However, I realized that this is the failing strategy I've been employing for my entire life. Time for a change.

I've only been attempting to work out for a week and already my focus is better. Even though the pain I normally feel in my shoulder is completely manageable, it's still there, in the back of my mind, forever poking at my concentration. This takes a lot of mental overhead away from the things I want to accomplish in life.

For a few hours I went into a severe depression over all this, but then I realized that maybe I should do something new for a change:

Actually try.

Giving up is easy. I've half-assed so many things in my life. I wonder what would happen if I actually tried and didn't give up so easy.

So I found this guy on YouTube by the name of Jeff Cavaliere, and it turns out that he's personally rehabilitated multiple people with the exact same problems I have today. I've learned more about my issues watching a few hours of his videos than I have over the last decade.

Winging Stretches

Rounded Shoulders

Anterior Pelvic Tilt

Posture

Rotator Cuff Stretches

Weak Glute Test

How to Fix “Low Back” Pain (INSTANTLY!)

7 Core Exercises for Low Back Pain (IMPORTANT!)

The PERFECT Abs Workout (Sets and Reps Included)

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After watching these videos in their entirety, I believe that the problem I am having involves my rotator cuffs and hip flexors overcompensating for a weak core and glute muscles.

It's absolutely crazy because Jeff addresses all the traditional exercises normally prescribed by physical trainers. These are exercises I've been told to do for more than a decade, and they aren't very effective at all; they simply bandaid the problem and give the appearance of helping.

For example, a physical therapist will tell you to tuck your chin if you spend a lot of time on the computer with your shoulders rolled forward. Jeff points out that this is somewhat ridiculous, as normal posture doesn't include people walking around with their chin's tucked all the time. That movement simply engages a few of the weak muscles that need to be activated.

Everything is connected, so if you want good posture, your glutes, core, and even sternum need to be positioned and activated correctly. Once you get the hang of it, your chin naturally falls back into a neutral position automatically without having to tuck it.

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The craziest part of this whole experience is that information like this is now freely available on the internet. If you know where to look, you can be your own advocate and come up with a better plan than a paid physical therapist.

I feel like the same thing is happening with crypto. This Jeff Cavaliere guy is a multi-millionaire, but he unleashes tons of value out to the public at zero cost. He is a prime example of someone living in abundance and using an abundance business model. We could learn a lot from him.

Imagine if people like this start teaming up with projects like @actifit.
That's when really crazy things start to happen.

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Conclusion

In any case, this is what I'm working on. I'm very annoyed that I haven't been able to work on my game more because of how much I've aggravated my injury, but I already feel like I'm on a solid path to recovery. If everything goes to plan the effort I put into physical rehabilitation will more than make up for any of the time I've lost doing so.

Investing in your own health is probably the best investment one can make.