I’ve always been very truthful in my posts, I want people to learn from my life while I share thoughts and experiences I wish I could have read about somewhere before. Today I want to talk about body secrets. What do I mean by that?

A body secret is something nobody else knows or feels but you. Have you ever been training or performing some tricks or drills, then someone compliments you on how limber/agile/strong/fit you look? How they wish they could do the same or be like you? It’s rewarding, but they don’t know that actually that day you’re hurting, you’re trying to make your session worth it, you have zero motivation, you’re really thinking how bad you suck that day. But from the outside,nobody knows, and still people see something great in you… Because you give for granted what you do and you have high expectations for yourself everyday. You’re not showing your body secrets at all.

Body secrets are those “imperfections” we all have, they can be mental – like disbelief and demotivation, or physical – pains and injuries of the past that just stick with you, become part of you, you’re past that point of “I’m going to heal and get rid of this” (welcome to the +30 yo club!). The mental ones occur naturally, we’re not designed to be at our 100% each day or life would be perfect. The physical ones are worse though, because no matter how happy and positive you are that day, physical pain is there to remind you not everything is great lol. The day I felt I was experiencing more physical pain than actually making progress, I found my body limit. And I can say this with confidence, because I always trained intensely, but never recklessly. I respected my body, while I was pushing it. I know I used all the care I could, I studied the spine and the muscles and what happens when I bend and what the body is designed to handle and how well it can adapt. People think contortion is unnatural, but so it’s sitting. People say contortion is crazy, but it’s because they never had the wish to test their body abilities in that way – exploring their full range of motion, till the furthest end of it. It’s risky, but it’s also fascinating, challenging and exciting.

So again, what’s a body secret? It’s your discovered limit. I’m going to talk about the physical ones: it could be in a certain body area, let’s say you “maxed out” your shoulders and now there are certain things you really can’t do anymore because they just hurt*. So how do you still train without overcompensating/ creating dysfunction, to achieve similar results as what you were used to when your shoulders were 100% functional?

1. Avoid the movements that cause pain. You don’t do these anymore. If shoulder presses hurt, why you do them? Find another movement that can use the same muscles but at a different angle/plane. Strengthen what weakness caused the previous injury (if you don’t know what caused what, physical therapy can help).

2. Master what your body has become good at without pain, let go of the things you used to do that now just hurts.

3. As you grow older – and everyone does – you’ll be able to be GREAT at LESS THINGS. But you’ll be very good at those fewer ones, because of years of repetition, your body will do those as a second nature.

There is still room to learn new tricks and exercises, but you’ll have to take in consideration your current body secret – limitation.

As time goes by your body will be like a personal labyrinth, you’re the only one that knows the right path to get where you can still train and perform high quality movement without aggravating current body limitations. 

So when you train and someone will acknowledge the hard work or your knowledge expressed in teaching someone else, they’ll see the greatness in you, without knowing your body secrets. Because you only know them. What really matter is how do you deal with them, mentally and physically. Physically, are you learning and making adjustments, or you letting them just get worse?

Adjust. Evolve. Move on.

*pain can be a discovered limit or an obstacle toward the limit. Pain is not always bad. I’ve talked about this widely in my past posts.