![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/8e\/Pratiquante_de_halt%C3%A9rophilie_%28CrossFit%29.jpg\")
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I hurt my back last week. It was so sore and painful that I could hardly get out of bed \u2013 just a constant ache. My husband kept asking what I had done, and I kept shrugging in reply. I had no idea. I blamed the gym. I blamed our mattress. (We really do need a new one.) I blamed the three-year-old who always wants to be carried or held.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I shuffle-staggered into the gym. One of my fellow coaches took one look at the way I was moving, gave me a knowing smile, and said, \u201cYou need to roll out your glutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my back that hurts. I\u2019m going to stretch and work on it a little before class.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it\u2019s not really your back that needs the attention. You need to roll out your a**.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stood there for a moment, and thought about it. He\u2019s a Crossfit coach, an Olympic lifting coach, and a few classes away from his Kinesiology degree\u2026he might be onto something.<\/p>\n
I reached for the foam roller, but he handed me the 3 inch PVC pipe that we use for rolling out the big problems. (It\u2019s never fun.) I tossed it on the ground, and then awkwardly sat down on it.<\/p>\n
The pain exploded. I gasped at the tightness and cramping in my posterior. The muscles screamed in protest as I rolled and smashed the knots out of them. I definitely whimpered. (I might have cried a little.) The other coach laughed. (Coaches have to have a slight sadistic streak. It\u2019s the law.)<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been squatting a lot in this strength cycle,\u201d he told me. \u201cWhen you overwork one muscle group, it tightens up and pulls on whatever is nearby. Unless you have an injury, pain in one area is usually caused by overwork in another.\u201d (I know<\/em> this, of course. Knee pain is caused by overworking the thighs, elbow by tightness in the forearm, etc. It\u2019s just hard to see it in yourself when you\u2019re in pain.)<\/p>\n It took almost an hour that day to get my butt muscles loosened up enough that I could move. It took a few days of working at it before the pain went away\u2026but it got me thinking about how this \u201cpain theory\u201d works in the rest of my life, not just in my own body.<\/p>\n When I spend too much time and energy working on one part of my life, it causes pain (sometimes crippling pain) in other parts of my life. If I pour my energies into my\u00a0 writing and my coaching, my children become clinging and whiny. Their newfound neediness is the chronic pain of their not being my focus. If I put all of my focus on the children and their lives and education, then my relationship with my husband begins to feel distant and my friends and extended family are neglected.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to remember this lesson from the gym, and keep it in my mind that when one area of my life goes awry, the problem probably isn\u2019t in the part that\u2019s not working. I need to figure out what\u2019s been overworked until it\u2019s stressing out everything around it. Because life, like our bodies, isn\u2019t a series of unrelated parts. It\u2019s all connected in some way or other.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hurt my back last week. It was so sore and painful that I could hardly get out of bed \u2013 just a constant ache. My husband kept asking what I had done, and I kept shrugging in reply. I had no idea. I blamed the gym. I blamed our mattress. (We really do need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nphoto credit: By Greg Westfall [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/pre>\n