Veteran. Everything hurts

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
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Hi all. I just want to thank everyone in advance for any attention and helpful advice this gets.

I am a 33 y/o male (5’7", 165lb) who has recently left the military after 9 years. As a result of the military service, I am fairly beat up. I have knee issues ( multiple Army P/Ts said it hits the criteria for patella femoral), I’ve had labral repair surgery but now have impingement of some sort (it gets really bad if I roll onto my left shoulder in my sleep, which is how I slept for the first 25 years of my life), and SI pain like symptoms( the pain usually originates around my SI joint/s and when it gets really bad travels down my legs and in long bouts of sitting like car rides my leg will completely cramp up), and some neural issues in my neck and upper back. All these issues are chronic, I’ve been dealing with them for years, and have seen Army Dr.s and P/Ts for them multiple times. My VA profile is even longer than this but these are my biggest issues. One thing I have noticed is resistance training helps with the pain symptoms but usually only temporarily. I have also noticed that the positions I slept in have a lot to do with what hurts and how bad from day-to-day. The problem is sleeping in one position is hard for me and avoiding one position that causes pain means taking another position that causes pain.

As far as goals, I just want to be as strong and healthy as I can be going into old age and have no motivation to try to compete in anything. I just want to be strong and fit. As far as training, I’ve basically run the gamer of every style of weight training under the sun: Army PT, powerlifting, bodybuilding, CrossFit, etc. I do admit though, that I have never worked with a professional coach in any of these so it is possible that my forms all suck and I’m doing everything wrong. I have shown very slow progress though and most novices/ people who don’t train compliment me. For the last few months since I left the military I have been following athlean-x programs (I know, I fell into the trap) but since finding BBM and stronger by science I quit listening to that BS and have been doing Greg Knuckols’ ATS. I am pretty interested in the BBM templates though.

At this point, I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m just going to be dealing with chronic pain for the rest of my life but because heavy resistance training seems to help give me a reprieve I feel like that could be implemented more effectively by someone with more education on the subject than me. Backing off training and seeing the Army P/Ts never really seemed to offer any improvement on symptoms. I have to go through the VA system for all my health care (not the most effective or efficient system at times) but I’ve been considering giving it another go. One thing I’m fairly sure of is that whichever physical therapist I do end up seeing, they usually have some views on resistance training that counter what is accepted to be true in the science-based resistance training community. They also tend to just try to throw painkillers at me which I absolutely do not want to do.

I am open to considering any advice anyone has to give on approaches I could take or possibly what kinds of conversations I should have with the VA docs.

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Hi Connor,

Sorry to hear about your struggles, but it does sound like you’re getting onto the right path here. A few questions:

  1. Have you read or listened to much of our content on pain?

  2. What are you hoping your VA physicians can offer you?

  3. Would you be open to consulting with our rehab team? There are a number of complex aspects to this situation that require fairly detailed conversations, and may involve addressing some factors that you may be reluctant to share on a public forum. It (along with coaching from our rehab team) would likely be our strongest recommendation here.

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Hey Dr.
1)​​​ I’ve been working my way through your YouTube content since I found out about you guys a week ago. I wish I had way sooner. Is there any content in particular you recommend I check out first?

  1. Usually what happens is I have to go see my primary care physician and they offer me opioids, which I won’t take, and then offer me a P/T referral. It usually takes a couple months before I get to see the P/T and that was pre-covid. When I had the labrum repair, I had a lot of success with physical therapy and lived mostly pain free for three years. I haven’t really had much success with physical therapy since then. All I’m looking for now is anything that will will help me reduce pain so that I can stay active as I age.

  2. I would be open to any consultation and coaching, as long as it’s a price I would be able to sell to my wife.

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I would definitely read these two articles:

As well as check out our podcasts on pain, sleep (as sleep is actually a major factor when it comes to pain), rehab … and anything else that catches your interest. The YouTube channel has several of our lectures on back pain and training-related content.

Understood. I agree that opioids are a likely to be a bad idea in this situation and we would not recommend them. I understand your experience with prior physical therapy approaches and have shared those frustrations with many of my patients over the years. This is the main reason I’ve recommended our team, as they are rehab specialists with expertise in the type of approach to pain that we describe in our content, and they have experience rehabilitating lifters. They are lifters themselves, too.

Of course. I would just point out that the care you have been getting so far has not seemed to help, and this is about your quality of life and future.

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