Do you have chronic pain that seems to never go away? 

By: Peter Stamos

Throughout my career as a coach, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that the human body rarely gives us simple answers. Every person brings a different training history, injury history, daily habits, and set of experiences that can influence how they move and respond to exercise.

That’s why two people who appear to have the same limitation may respond very differently to the same exercise. The challenge isn’t simply finding an exercise that creates an immediate improvement. It’s understanding why that exercise helped and whether the improvement carries over over time.

Why Individual Responses Matter

Having guiding principles is helpful, but those principles need to be adapted to the individual. Two people can show a similar movement limitation yet respond very differently to the same exercise or strategy.

Rather than assuming a particular finding requires a particular solution, we can test different approaches and observe how the person responds. Those responses help us determine which factors may actually be relevant to their movement.

Your History Matters

No two individuals arrive at the same point in exactly the same way. Different sports, activities, injuries, occupations, and training experiences can all influence how someone moves today.

Understanding that history gives us context for what we see during an assessment and can help explain why two people with similar movement limitations may respond differently to the same approach.

Does the Improvement Last?

One way to determine whether we’re moving in the right direction is to see what happens after the initial improvement.

If an exercise improves a movement during a session, we can retest it later to see whether the change lasts. A lasting improvement can provide useful evidence that the approach is addressing something meaningful for that individual.

If the improvement disappears quickly, that doesn’t necessarily mean the exercise was useless. It tells us that there may be other factors influencing the movement that still need to be investigated.

The goal is to use both immediate and longer-term responses as information, rather than assuming that one successful test gives us the entire answer.

Key Takeaway

An immediate improvement is valuable, but it doesn’t always give us the complete answer.

If a change lasts, that’s useful information. If the limitation returns, that’s information too—and it may tell us that additional factors still need to be investigated.

The goal isn’t to find one exercise that temporarily makes something feel better. It’s to understand why the improvement occurred, whether it lasts, and what that tells us about the bigger picture.

Continue Learning

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