Here is Post #2 for Strong Strides, written to layer cleanly on top of Post #1, stay consistent with pain neuroscience, and tighten the admissibility grammar without introducing jargon.
You can publish this directly.
Why Doing the Right Thing Can Still Make You Worse
One of the most frustrating experiences in persistent pain or stalled performance is this:
You do what you’re supposed to do.
And things still deteriorate.
You follow the program.
You respect the science.
You progress gradually.
You listen to your body.
And yet flare-ups increase, tolerance narrows, or confidence erodes.
When that happens, people usually assume one of three things:
There’s a fourth explanation that’s more accurate—and far less personal.
“Right” Is a Local Judgment
Most interventions are evaluated locally:
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Does this reduce pain?
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Does this improve movement?
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Does this increase strength or output?
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Does this feel better afterward?
Those are reasonable questions. They’re just incomplete.
An action can be locally right and globally costly at the same time.
Pain neuroscience already acknowledges this in principle. We know that pain is context-dependent and that short-term changes don’t always predict long-term outcomes.
What’s often missing is a way to evaluate decisions over time, not just effects in the moment.
When Improvement Has a Hidden Price
Imagine an intervention that:
But quietly:
From the inside, this feels like success.
From the outside, nothing looks obviously wrong—until the options start disappearing.
This is why people often say:
“I don’t understand. This helped at first.”
That statement is usually true.
It just doesn’t tell the whole story.
Capacity Is What You’re Actually Spending
Every action draws from adaptive capacity:
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physical
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neurological
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metabolic
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psychological
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contextual
You don’t notice this when capacity is abundant. You notice it when the margin shrinks.
The problem is not that capacity exists.
The problem is assuming it’s unlimited.
When an action consistently costs more capacity than it returns, the system doesn’t fail immediately. It degrades.
Degradation Looks Like Progress—At First
Early on, degradation is subtle:
None of this looks like injury.
None of it demands alarm.
So people double down on what worked before—because it did work.
That’s when doing the “right” thing starts making things worse.
Why This Is So Common in Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is where this pattern shows up most clearly because:
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systems are already sensitized
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margins are already thinner
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compensation is already in play
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recovery capacity is already taxed
In that context, actions that would be neutral or beneficial elsewhere become expensive.
This doesn’t mean the action is bad.
It means the system can no longer afford it under current constraints.
This Is Not About Being Conservative
Avoiding this trap is not about:
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doing less
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being cautious
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avoiding challenge
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resting forever
It’s about matching actions to what the system can actually absorb.
Sometimes that means doing less.
Sometimes it means doing something different.
Sometimes it means changing the rules entirely.
What it never means is pretending that yesterday’s tolerance still exists.
The Question That Changes Everything
Instead of asking:
“Is this exercise correct?”
“Is this evidence-based?”
“Is this what I should be doing?”
Ask:
“What does this cost me tomorrow?”
If an action reduces future options—even while improving the present—it is not neutral. It is expensive.
Pain doesn’t always signal that cost immediately.
But the system always keeps track.
Closing
Doing the right thing can still make you worse when “right” is defined too narrowly.
Progress that consumes capacity is not progress.
Relief that shrinks future options is not recovery.
The work is not to find perfect interventions.
It’s to make decisions that the system can continue to live with.
That’s where things stop unraveling.
