“Hey Drew, I need to cancel my membership. My (insert body part) is injured.”
This is an email I will get now and then from a member wanting to cancel due to an injury or something hurting.
I get it, we don’t want to try to push through pain all the time. The issue with this is that there is a reason we are in pain and quitting the gym is NOT the answer. It’s actually the opposite of what you should do. If you have an injury, you are lucky if you are part of our gym. We specialized in this sort of thing.
I have an Exercise and Wellness degree. I spent 10 years working alongside some of the best physical therapist in the area. My wife, and co-owner, is a Physicians Assistant in the ER and Urgent Care. I have worked with 1000s of clients who have some sort of injury. Heck, at some point, we will all have some pain that needs to be tended to. We have nurses, doctors, therapist and other health care professionals at our gym. We have devoted our lives to helping people be healthy.
This is usually how this plays out:
Ron has goals. He needs to lose weight to get off his diabetes meds. He is not in good health. He played sports growing up and now that he is 50 years old, he has some pain and issues that were never taken care of properly when he was younger. Lets say he has a bad shoulder. He quit sports, quit being physically active when he was 23 because of his shoulder pain. Since then, his pain went away in his shoulder. Due to inactivity, he has diabetes. Starts exercising. Now the pain that he never delt with when he was 23, roars it’s ugly head again. Now he wants to quit exercise again. He quits, diabetes gets worse. Now he has other health issues.
Now, here is what I recommend:
You can change the past, so we are going to pick up on Ron’s story at the time he was diagnosed with diabetes.
Ron should let the coach know right away that he has some past issues with his shoulder and that it is causing pain again. Not months after the pain, but right away. A coach does evals his shoulder and determines if it’s something we can help with or if he needs to see a specialist (Athletic Trainer or Physical Therapist) that is in our StrongArm network.
If Ron needs to see a specialist, he will continue to train with us while he is seeing the specialist. We will communicate with the specialist to make sure we work together so that Ron’s shoulder gets better AND he continues his journey towards getting off diabetes meds.
Ron has a bad shoulder. But, he still has another shoulder, two legs, and a core that still needs to be worked to help him become healthy. There is no reason for Ron to quit.
If you are struggling with pain, shoot me an email at drew@strongarm-crossfit.com and we can see what the best route is for you!
-Drew