The One Question to ask yourself if you keep getting injured.

You've probably said some version of this before:

"My back just went." "My knee started hurting out of nowhere." "My shoulder keeps flaring up."

I hear it constantly. And I get it.. when pain shows up, it genuinely feels like something 'different'. A different part, a different sort of pain.

But here's what I've learned after years of working with men in their 40s and 50s who can't seem to break the injury cycle:

Injuries don't appear. They accumulate.

Pain isn't random. It's just fashionably late to the party.

And there's one question that cuts through all the noise, explains almost every recurring injury I see, and completely changes how you approach getting back to training properly.

That question is this:

"It was all OK… until ______."

Simple, But incredibly powerful.

Because instead of obsessing over where it hurts now, it forces you to take a step back and rewind. And when you do that honestly, the answer is never "nothing."

Here's How It Usually Goes

A typical story sounds like this:

"It was all OK until I rolled my ankle playing five-a-side." "Then my calf kept tightening up." "Then I pulled my hamstring a few months later." "Now my back keeps giving out."

So naturally, when you come to me, you say: "My back is the problem."

But it isn't.

Your back is just the last place left doing the work.

Let me explain what's actually happening.

You roll your ankle. Your body, being smart, protects you. It turns down force production through that area so you don't make things worse.

And so it should.

But here's the issue: you've still got to walk, train, work, and live your life. That load has to go somewhere.

So your calf picks up more slack until it can't, and that breaks. Then your hamstring does more work, until it can't... you can see where this is going.

None of those muscles signed up to this!!

Fast forward six months or a year, and your back "goes."

Everyone treats the back. You rest it, stretch it, maybe get some physio. It settles down.

But the back was never the problem. It was the solution.

And because no one addressed what happened upstream, that ankle that never quite got strong again, the pattern just repeats itself somewhere else.

Different body part. Same story.

Why Most Rehab Keeps You Stuck

Here's where traditional rehab often misses the mark for athletic, driven men.

It asks: "Where does it hurt?"

But it should be asking: "What changed before this started?"

Most rehab clears pain locally. Very little restores strength globally.

So you feel better for a bit. Then you load up again. Then the same cycle kicks in.

That's why so many men feel like they're constantly managing something! Because they are. They're playing whack-a-mole with symptoms instead of fixing the underlying pattern.

What Changes When You Ask the Right Question

Once you start asking "It was all OK until…" everything shifts.

You stop chasing the symptoms. You start identifying patterns.

You can see:

• What stopped doing its job

• What picked up the slack

• Why the same issues keep resurfacing

Now training has a purpose again.

Not random exercises. Not generic stretches. Not smashing yourself in the gym and hoping for the best.

But restoring capacity where it was lost and redistributing load properly across your entire system.

This one question answers three critical things:

1. What actually needs rebuilding

2. What needs loading... and what doesn't

3. Why certain exercises keep flaring you up

It's the difference between managing injuries and controlling your performance.

One keeps you cautious. The other gives you your confidence back.

Where Real Rebuilds Start

Every rebuild I run with clients starts here.

Not in the gym. Not with a cookie-cutter program. But with the timeline.

Because if you don't understand when things changed, you'll never understand why they keep breaking down.

Your body remembers everything, even when you don't.

The old ankle sprain. The hamstring you "got over." The dodgy knee from that charity run three years ago.

They all left a mark. And they're all still affecting how you move today.

So What Now?

If you're injured right now, or stuck in that stop–start cycle where you can't seem to string together more than a few good weeks, ask yourself:

"It was all OK… until ______."

Ponder that. Write it down if you need to. Be honest.

That answer is where your solution lives.

And look, I know this work isn't always straightforward to do on your own. Connecting the dots between an old injury and your current pain isn't obvious when you're in the thick of it.

An example

I have started working with a new client this week and we went through his injury timeline. To make sure we had covered everything I ran through all of his body-parts from the bottom up.

And guess what he had forgotten.

2 serious ankle sprains that kept him out of football for 3 months. Thats a serious injury.

And thats where we need to start. An injury from 20 years ago!!

If you want help working that out properly, and building a clear plan that actually addresses the root cause instead of just managing symptoms, I offer a free training and injury audit where we map this out together.

No hard sell. No pressure. Just a proper conversation about what's going on and what needs to happen next.

Because every month you spend managing instead of rebuilding, is another month where your confidence in your body erodes a little bit more.

You don't have to stay stuck in this cycle.

Contact me via the form on the website to arrange a chat. Or book in here https://calendly.com/razorperformance/30min