The rehab traitors

The Rehab Traitors

We’re all sitting around the round table… the candles are lit, the music’s tense, Claudia’s fringe is on the brink of making her blind, and someone is about to be “banished.”

Except this isn’t The Traitors.
This is the world of rehab, and we’ve got our own traitors hiding in plain sight.

They look convincing.
They talk a good game.
They’ve infiltrated gyms, clinics, and Instagram feeds everywhere.
But they’ve been lying to you all along.

Welcome to The Rehab Traitors.

And tonight… we will murder the three biggest imposters.

Jonathon “Glutes Asleep” Ross

Accused of causing: Knee pain and hip instability
Modus operandi: Blaming your backside for everything from patella pain to poor running mechanics.

They whisper: “Your glutes aren’t firing.”
They promise that a few band walks will save you.
But your glutes aren’t asleep. They never were.

Reality: Your glutes are huge muscles, capable of producing enormous amounts of force. They will never be asleep, and they don’t need waking up.
Because they can produce so much force, everything beneath them must be strong enough to cope with it. If not, it’s like shooting a cannon from a canoe, very unstable indeed.
You need to focus on what’s weak underneath the glutes, old injuries, or any existing weaknesses. When those muscles are solidified, your glutes will “function” just fine.

Example 1
A runner was told his glutes were weak because, when he ran, his hip dropped out to the side upon landing (Trendelenburg gait). What he wasn’t told was that because he’d had chronic knee pain before the injury, his quads weren’t functioning well enough to decelerate his landing. The hip drop was his body’s solution to the problem, not the problem itself.
And he wondered why doing clamshells made it worse, he was hammering an already overworked muscle.

Example 2
I had one lady whose glutes genuinely weren’t functioning. Guess why?
Because she’d fallen off her bike and landed directly on her hip or glute.
In this case, it makes total sense that they weren’t working properly, she’d had a huge trauma to the area.
Yes, we needed to work on her glutes, but I still didn’t use clamshells.

I hope this demonstrates that being told your “glutes are asleep” is a lazy diagnosis. Let’s question the why behind it.

The Faithful
Trust the faithful who look at your story, your injury history, and take a deep dive into finding the problem and solving it, not just send you out the door with a “your glutes are asleep” soundbite.

MURDERED.

Alan “Weak Core” Carr

Accused of causing: Lower back pain
Modus operandi: Convincing everyone to brace, suck in, and walk around like they’re constantly about to take a punch.

This traitor is clever, it hides behind “good posture” and “core stability.”
But the more you listen, the stiffer and more fearful you become.

Reality: When you hurt your back, you’ll naturally brace to protect it in the short term. But the goal is to get back to not bracing, to move freely, with thoughtless, fearless movement.
So why on earth would we want to brace all the time? That’s doing the opposite of what we want.

Real example of a mistake
I went through a stage of asking everyone to brace their core, so I’m not innocent.
The lightbulb moment came when I had a VERY strong guy who kept tweaking his back. The funny thing? He kept doing it with really innocuous movements, picking something up off the floor, tying his shoelaces.
This was because he was very strong in a “neutral position” when his core was on, but as soon as he moved out of that position, he was weak, and his body didn’t like it.
Life doesn’t happen in neutral. And you can’t have your core sucked in all the time, it’s not possible.

The Faithful
Trust the faithful who look at your story, find the root cause of your back pain, bulletproof your old injuries, and strengthen your body to take pressure off your back.
Trust them to help you move without fear, without bracing, without sucking in, and to help you move as you were meant to.

MURDERED.

Cat “Banded Rotator Cuff” Burns

Accused of: Fixing all shoulder pain and impingement
Modus operandi: Lurking in every physio clinic and warm up area, armed with a resistance band and false promises.

Endless external rotations before a bench press, like a ritual sacrifice to the shoulder gods.
But this traitor often doesn’t strengthen what actually matters.

Reality: The cuff often isn’t weak, it’s sensitive or overloaded.

Real example
I had a client with chronic shoulder pain who’d been given the usual banded exercises, but was frustrated that they weren’t working, in fact, they were making things worse.
When we looked into his injury history, he’d broken his wrist on that side and suffered from tennis elbow. Upon testing, I could see the muscles around the wrist and elbow were very weak, to be expected.
This meant the shoulder was overworking to make up for those weaknesses.
Once again, the shoulder was the solution, not the problem.

The Faithful
Trust the faithful who look at your story, your injury history, and take a deep dive into finding and solving the real problem.
Not just send you out the door with a copy and paste programme.

MURDERED.

The Round Table Recap

So there you have it, our three traitors unmasked.
Would you have banished them, or have you been second guessing all this time?

If you’ve been lied to by these traitors and want to rebuild your body the right way, without fear, soundbites, or guesswork,
come and join us at Razor Performance.
We’ll find the truth behind your pain and rebuild your strength from there.

What’s Been Happening at Razor Performance

I had a super interesting week. A client joined me five weeks ago with knee pain and a very mysterious shoulder pain.
Generally, I find knees quite easy, not always, so his knees made huge progress really quickly.

But to be honest, I had no idea what was happening with his shoulder when we first spoke. He had a very mysterious pain under his collarbone, right on the end near his neck, and when he put his arm across his body, it was really painful.

Weeks 1 to 3:
I tried some exercises that stretched and strengthened the area, with mixed success. We tried, we adjusted, we tweaked, but it wasn’t quite right.
So there I was in my kitchen, stretching my arms in all directions, trying to figure it out, my wife watching me in her usual despair as I ignored house jobs and disappeared into rehab land. Still unsure.

Week 4:
We spoke again and ran some tests overhead, and then the golden nugget. When that shoulder went overhead, he had to really shrug to get it there. Why would this happen?
Could he not lengthen his lats? His triceps? Could he not externally rotate his shoulder well?
I decided it was probably all of the above, but that the lack of external rotation might be putting added pressure on his collarbone when lifting, causing the pain.

Here’s the thing, I didn’t have to pick one issue to focus on. He was training three hours a week with me, I could fix all of them.

Now we’re on week five, and he messages to say that since starting the new programme, with the solution in it, his shoulder feels great and he’s got loads more confidence in it.

We’re not out of the woods yet, but this is why I LOVE rehab. I love a puzzle.
It’s really quite frustrating at times, as it’s never a straight line, but it’s amazing when you can make real changes to people’s training, pain, and life.

If you’ve been frustrated by injury and tried the traditional approaches, and want to try something new, the link to book an introduction is below.

Stage 1 – Fix you up
Stage 2 – Get you STRONG
Stage 3 – Redefine your limits

👉 https://calendly.com/razorperformance/30min