“Begin with the person, and end with the problem”

-Scott Livingston

I’ve spoken recently about beginning a new chapter as Head of Reconditioning at Cirque du Soleil. It has been an incredible first month. Every day has stretched my thinking, reinforced things I’ve come to believe through a lifetime of discovery, and at the same time pushed me to question, revise, and rethink ideas I thought I understood reasonably well.

One of the things I have always loved about this profession is that, if you remain curious, it never stops teaching you. Experience doesn’t provide certainty. If anything, it teaches you to become more comfortable with uncertainty. The longer I do this work, the more I realize that every answer simply opens the door to a better question.

This new chapter has also taken me back for a moment.

I found myself thinking about my early years with B2Ten and one Olympic athlete in particular. Even now, nearly twenty years later, I still think about that project whenever someone presents with what appears to be an obvious problem.

He was an elite alpine skier, almost ten years into an extraordinary career, contemplating retirement because of debilitating back pain. Everyone’s attention was understandably fixed on the lumbar spine. The MRI showed a disc herniation. His hip constantly needed to be released. Every intervention seemed to revolve around where the pain lived.

But the back was the distraction.

The real story had begun years earlier with an ACL injury. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, his nervous system had learned to unload a knee that no longer felt completely trustworthy. Over time it became remarkably efficient at shifting load elsewhere, and eventually the spine became the place that paid the price.

Once we clarified the map and helped his nervous system rebuild confidence in the knee, the back pain slowly began to settle. What followed wasn’t simply the resolution of symptoms, but the much longer process of restoring everything that years of protection had quietly taken away. Only then could we truly begin rebuilding the athlete.

I didn’t fully appreciate it then, but looking back now, that project became one of the first lessons that would eventually shape what Jaime and I came to call Reconditioning.

Here I am, nearly two decades later, surrounded once again by remarkable performers whose bodies have spent years solving extraordinarily difficult movement problems.

Almost immediately, I inherited four complex cases. Three artists with significant patellar tendinopathy and another with a substantial articular cartilage deficit in the knee. On the surface they appeared remarkably similar. Four injured knees. Four artists unable to perform at the level they expected of themselves.

It didn’t take long to realize they had almost nothing in common.

Each artist carried a completely different history of trauma, surgery, previous interventions, movement strategies, compensation, success, disappointment, and recovery. For every one of them, the knee wasn’t the beginning of the story. It was simply the latest chapter in one that had been unfolding for years.

As I inherited these projects, I found myself doing what experience has taught me to do.

Slow down.

Become curious before becoming clever.

Resist the temptation to solve the obvious problem before understanding it.

Every previous injury had left its mark. Every surgery had altered more than tissue. Every previous attempt to solve the problem had influenced the way each artist now moved, loaded, and interpreted their own body.

The deeper I looked, the more one idea continued to present itself.

The knee was always the subject matter.

The knee was never the story.

That simple observation probably sits at the very centre of what Reconditioning has become.

Thirty-eight years ago, I believed reconditioning was about treating injured tissue.

Twenty years ago, I believed it was about correcting the mechanics.

Today, I believe it’s about understanding why a beautifully intelligent nervous system concluded that protection was the best available solution.

That isn’t to say tissue doesn’t matter. It absolutely does. Mechanics matter. Strength matters. Capacity matters. Biology matters. They all matter.

What has changed over the years is not what I value.

It’s the size of the lens through which I view the problem.

One of the unexpected consequences of that larger lens has been humility. Earlier in my career, I found myself searching for certainty. Today, I’m much more comfortable with questions. I’ve become less interested in proving myself right and far more interested in understanding why this particular human being has adapted the way they have. That shift has probably made me a better practitioner than any certification or technique I have ever learned.

A recent conversation on the Leave Your Mark Podcast with my good friend and applied neurology practitioner Matt Bush reinforced something I have slowly come to appreciate over the better part of my career.

The nervous system isn’t passively receiving information from the world around us.

It is continuously interpreting it.

Every movement we make. Every visual cue. Every sensation from our joints and muscles. Every previous injury. Every success. Every disappointment. Every night’s sleep. Every stressful day. Every conversation with a practitioner. Every explanation we receive about our condition becomes information that the nervous system must somehow organize into a coherent understanding of the world.

Beneath all of that complexity, I have come to believe there is one remarkably simple question it continues to ask.

Am I safe?

Not, Can I move?

Not, Can I become stronger?

Not even, Is my knee damaged?

Simply…

Am I safe enough to do what is being asked of me?

I often say that the body will not access what it doesn’t know, or perceives as unsafe.

Over the years, that simple statement has become less of a teaching point and more of a clinical observation.

I see it every single day.

Shortly before arriving at Cirque, I spent time with one of the world’s best Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athletes who had been struggling with persistent back pain. We spent our first session talking very little about her back. Instead, we explored her history, her schedule, her stress, her recovery habits, the demands of competition, and the realities of trying to perform at the highest level while navigating everything else life was asking of her.

Only then did we begin talking about the pain.

That session reminded me of something I have come to believe very deeply.

Begin with the person, and end with the problem.

Not the other way around.

I don’t think we spend nearly enough time understanding the life that surrounds the injury. Sleep. Relationships. Work. Fear. Expectations. Previous experiences. Confidence. None of those things appear on an MRI, yet every one of them changes the way a nervous system interprets the world around it.

Our physiological and psychological state changes everything.

A tired nervous system doesn’t interpret movement the same way as a rested one.

A fearful nervous system doesn’t explore options the same way as a confident one.

A stressed nervous system doesn’t perceive opportunity the same way as a calm one.

State drives interpretation.

Interpretation constrains options.

Recognizing the controllable elements in someone’s life may be one of the most important interventions we make before we prescribe a single exercise.

The body doesn’t become protective because it is flawed.

It becomes protective because protection is one of the most intelligent things the nervous system can do.

Long before we consciously appreciate a potential problem, the nervous system is already predicting what might happen next based upon everything it has learned throughout our lives.

Those predictions influence how we move, how much force we produce, how confidently we load a limb, how much pain we experience, and ultimately what options the body believes are available.

Once we begin to appreciate that, something important changes.

We stop asking only, “What’s wrong with the knee?”

Instead, we begin asking, “Why did this nervous system conclude this was the safest solution available?”

Those are profoundly different questions.

One of the artists I’m currently working with ruptured her ACL years ago, which was repaired with a patellar tendon graft. She later sustained an Achilles tear. Now she presents with patellar tendinopathy. All on the same side of the body. Coincidence?

Another has patellar tendinopathy on one side, but strangely enough, a previous opposite ankle fracture repaired surgically, followed by a patellar tendinopathy and a chondral deficit in the same-side knee. What’s the real problem?

If all I see is today’s diagnosis, I miss the story entirely.

Their bodies have spent years adapting.

Some of those adaptations served them brilliantly. Others gradually became less useful as new demands were placed upon them. None of them were mistakes. They were intelligent solutions to the problems each nervous system believed it needed to solve at the time.

That realization has probably changed my practice more than any technique I have ever learned.

It has made me slower to judge movement, less interested in labelling compensations as “bad,” and far more interested in understanding why they emerged in the first place.

Every compensation tells a story.

Every protective strategy has a history.

Every movement pattern reflects an ongoing conversation between a human being and the world they have experienced.

It has also changed the way I think about every intervention we provide.

Every intervention is information.

Manual therapy is information. Exercise is information. Balance training is information. Vision training is information. The conversations we have are information. The explanations we provide are information. Even the confidence we communicate as practitioners becomes information.

Whether we appreciate it or not, the nervous system is listening to all of it.

Our responsibility isn’t simply to prescribe the right exercise or apply the right technique. It is to provide information that helps the nervous system become more confident in the choices it makes.

When that happens, movement often changes.

Pain often changes.

Performance often changes.

Not because we overpowered the body, but because we helped it arrive at a different conclusion.

The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in chasing injuries.

I’m far more fascinated by the extraordinary intelligence of human adaptation.

Every compensation tells a story.

Every protective strategy once served a purpose.

Every movement pattern reflects a nervous system doing its very best with the information available to it.

Our responsibility isn’t to fight that intelligence.

It’s to understand it.

Then, patiently and respectfully, provide better information.

Because when the nervous system begins to perceive the world differently, it often begins to move differently.

And when movement changes, everything else has the opportunity to change with it.

Perhaps that has been the lesson quietly waiting for me all along.

The artists arrived with injured knees.

But the knees were never the story.

The story has always been about the remarkable human beings adapting beneath them.

And perhaps that is what Reconditioning has really been about all along.

“Transformation isn’t learning more, it’s seeing more.”

As a young practitioner in therapy and performance many moons ago, I sought more skills, techniques, and methodologies. I thought it was what I did that made the difference. I believed that if I accumulated enough tools, I would become a better practitioner, achieve better results, and ultimately prosper.

For a while, there was some truth to that belief. You need a certain amount of actual ability to make a difference. You need a foundation.

But inevitably, you start to run into walls.

Walls that can’t be overcome simply by adding another tool to the toolbox.

Over time, I realized the real power wasn’t in collecting techniques. It was in understanding why the problems existed in the first place, and then applying the right approach, at the right time, for the right reasons.

For all those years since, I’ve watched practitioners chase new techniques.

Another manual therapy.

Another exercise.

Another certification.

Another assessment.

Most of us begin our careers believing the next tool will finally make us complete.

Then something interesting happens.

The more experience we accumulate, the less we rely on the tools themselves, and the more we rely on how we think.

That realization came into focus again this week as we wrapped up another fourteen-week Complete Reconditioning cohort.

When I asked everyone what had changed most, almost no one talked about learning a new drill.

They talked about seeing differently.

One practitioner described finally understanding the biological side of the biopsychosocial model.

Another said he now creates specific inputs and measures the outputs instead of simply assuming an exercise should work.

Another admitted she was still building confidence introducing these ideas to clients but recognized the power in a new way of thinking.

Another described shifting from treating people to teaching people.

None of those are exercise changes.

They’re perspective changes.

That’s when it hit me.

The purpose of learning something new isn’t to replace what already works.

It’s to increase the number of things you’re capable of noticing.

The best practitioners don’t collect techniques.

They collect perspectives.

Every new perspective expands the number of solutions available when the obvious answer isn’t enough.

That’s where the Grey Area lives.

Not between right and wrong.

Between what you’ve always seen…

…and what you’re finally able to see.

And the crazy thing is, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

What was once obscure becomes obvious.

Patterns emerge where you once saw randomness. You begin to recognize what needs to change, when it needs to change, and perhaps most importantly, why it needs to change.

Many of those who have come through our courses over the years, and now through the Complete Program, are seasoned professionals. They’ve built successful careers, just as I did. They’ve helped countless people.

But they’ve also accumulated failed projects, unresolved cases, and disappointments.

Experience has taught them something valuable.

It’s not about having more techniques.

It’s about having greater clarity.

They’ve come looking for a process that is less definitive and diagnostic, and more speculative, exploratory, and hypothesis-driven. They understand that you rarely know the answer immediately. You arrive at it by following a process that gradually clarifies the map.

Eventually, you realize that much of what you’ve been doing all along has been applying inputs to a system, mostly sensory and motor, while hoping for a better output.

The problem wasn’t that the interventions were wrong.

The problem was that you had no reliable way of validating the process.

No systematic way of broadening your input strategy.

No clear framework for changing direction when proprioception wasn’t the magic solution.

For many of these experienced practitioners, developing a deeper understanding of the neurological system has been transformational.

One comment comes up over and over again.

“Why did I wait so long to learn this?”

It’s usually followed by a little frustration.

Not because they weren’t successful before.

Because they realize how much sooner they could have understood what they were actually seeing.

But we always remind everyone who joins the program:

Learning isn’t about replacing who you are.

It’s about expanding what you’re capable of seeing.

Throughout our final discussion, several practitioners admitted things like:

“I’m not confident enough yet.”

“Some clients resist.”

“I don’t know when to use it.”

“I’m afraid of abandoning what already works.”

Those are universal feelings.

New knowledge almost always creates uncertainty.

That’s normal.

We’re all resistant to change, including our clients.

But eventually, something happens.

You test a new idea.

You see an immediate change.

The athlete moves differently.

The pain decreases.

The movement becomes cleaner.

And suddenly the theory becomes reality.

You’re hooked.

That’s why we tell everyone that confidence doesn’t come from information.

It comes from repetition.

The goal isn’t to become a “brain practitioner.”

It’s to become a better practitioner.

The Complete Reconditioning Experience was never designed to replace your manual therapy…

Your strength coaching…

Or your exercise prescription.

It was designed to help you understand why they sometimes work…

…and why they sometimes don’t.

I’m obviously biased.

But whether you’re early in your career or decades into it, investing in a process that helps bring all of your knowledge together, one that allows you to use every tool you already possess with greater clarity, confidence, and intention, is worth the price of admission every single time.

“What if we’ve been asking the wrong question all along?”

Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself returning to that question more than any other.

It wasn’t prompted by a new research paper, nor was it sparked by the latest technique or certification making its way through our profession. Instead, it emerged from a conversation that reminded me just how easily we divide ourselves into camps.

Strength and conditioning.

Rehabilitation.

Performance.

Pain science.

Biomechanics.

Psychology.

Neuroscience.

Each discipline develops its own language, its own methods, its own community, and, if we’re not careful, its own belief that it possesses the most important piece of the puzzle.

After nearly forty years working with athletes, Olympians, professional teams, therapists, coaches, and now artists at Cirque du Soleil, I’ve come to believe that these divisions exist far more in our professions than they do in the human body itself.

Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking, Which approach is correct?

Maybe we should be asking,

What is the human nervous system trying to accomplish?

That question has quietly guided the evolution of my own thinking for much of my career.

When I first entered strength and conditioning, like many coaches of my generation, everything revolved around outputs. Bigger. Faster. Stronger. We chased force production, power, speed, and every measurable quality we believed would improve performance. The prescription seemed straightforward: apply stress, build capacity, improve performance.

I still believe those qualities matter. They always will.

But over time I came to realize they represented only part of the story.

As my career unfolded, I found myself working with athletes who challenged many of my assumptions. Olympic athletes. Female athletes. Figure skaters. Divers. Freestyle skiers. Artists. Individuals whose relationship with movement looked nothing like the football culture in which I had been educated.

Many of them didn’t love lifting weights.

They loved expressing themselves through movement.

The gym wasn’t their identity. It was simply one tool that allowed them to continue doing what they truly loved.

That realization forced me to ask a question I hadn’t considered before.

Why are we lifting weights in the first place?

At first, the answer seemed obvious.

To get stronger.

Eventually I realized that strength was never really the objective. It was one possible outcome. The deeper objective was resilience. Adaptability. Confidence. Robustness. The ability to solve increasingly complex movement problems under increasingly demanding conditions.

That subtle shift changed the trajectory of my career.

Around the same time, another observation kept resurfacing.

As both a therapist and a strength coach, I found myself moving back and forth between two professional worlds that rarely seemed to speak the same language.

Rehabilitation focused on protecting people.

Performance focused on pushing them.

One valued caution.

The other celebrated overload.

Yet both were working with exactly the same human being.

That contradiction fascinated me.

It still does.

I remember standing in a treatment room early in my career after performing what, on the surface, seemed like a relatively simple manual therapy intervention. Within minutes, the athlete moved differently. Their range of motion improved. Their pain diminished. They walked away feeling better than when they had arrived.

I remember standing there thinking,

“What just happened?”

I hadn’t changed the structure of their tissues in five minutes.

I certainly hadn’t rebuilt muscle.

Something else had changed.

At the time, I didn’t have the language to explain it. Today, I think I do.

What changed wasn’t simply tissue.

It was information.

That question “What just happened?” has quietly shaped the last three decades of my professional life.

Over the years I immersed myself in the work of people whose ideas challenged my own. Janda, Kolář, and the Prague School. Cook and Burton. PRI. Spina and FRC. Motor learning. Ecological dynamics. Pain science. Neuroscience. 

There have been so many factors that have shaped my current beliefs.

At first, they appeared to occupy entirely different worlds. They used different terminology, different assessments, different exercises, and often attracted different tribes of practitioners.

The deeper I studied them, however, the harder it became to ignore what they shared.

Each was asking essentially the same question.

How does the nervous system organize human movement?

Some approached that question through developmental patterns.

Others through respiration.

Some through joint control.

Others through perception, sensory information, or threat.

Different maps.

The same territory.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned through all of those experiences can be summarized in one sentence.

The body will not access what it doesn’t know, or what it perceives as unsafe.

When I first arrived at that conclusion, I believed it applied primarily to rehabilitation.

I no longer think that.

It influences strength.

Power.

Speed.

Motor learning.

Skill acquisition.

Confidence.

Decision making.

Movement variability.

Performance under pressure.

Every movement we produce is ultimately a solution generated by the nervous system.

Muscles don’t make decisions.

The brain does.

Which brings me to pain science.

From time to time I hear pain science dismissed because it is viewed as something that belongs exclusively in rehabilitation or in the management of persistent pain. While I understand why that perception exists, I think it misses the greatest contribution pain science has made to our profession.

Pain science isn’t valuable simply because it changed how we think about pain.

It is valuable because it changed how we think about the brain.

It helped many of us appreciate that pain is an output rather than an input. That the brain is constantly gathering information, making predictions, assessing threat, and selecting responses that it believes will best protect the organism.

But here’s the important part.

The brain doesn’t suddenly stop doing those things because an athlete walks into a weight room.

Or onto a football field.

Or onto a balance beam.

Or under the lights of a Cirque du Soleil performance.

Those same predictive processes influence confidence, coordination, muscle tone, breathing, movement variability, attention, decision making, and ultimately performance itself.

Understanding how the brain processes information isn’t simply a rehabilitation skill.

It’s a human performance skill.

One of the reasons I’m so excited about my new role at Cirque du Soleil is that it continues to challenge my assumptions every single day.

These performers didn’t develop extraordinary movement capacity by chasing bigger squat numbers alone.

They developed remarkable abilities through exploration, repetition, creativity, and by solving increasingly complex movement problems over thousands of hours.

Their nervous systems became extraordinarily adaptable, curious, creative, and remarkably robust.

That observation doesn’t diminish the importance of strength training.

Far from it.

It simply reminds me that strength is one ingredient within a much larger recipe.

The gym remains one of the most powerful environments we have available.

I simply see its purpose differently today than I did thirty years ago.

To me, the gym has become a laboratory.

A place to experiment.

To expose the nervous system to meaningful challenges.

To build options rather than limitations.

To improve organization before expression.

To develop capability before capacity.

Perhaps that’s what has changed most over four decades.

The longer I work in this profession, the less interested I become in defending disciplines.

I’ve changed my mind too many times.

Every decade has dismantled another certainty I once held.

Today, I find myself far more interested in understanding the remarkable complexity of the human being than proving that any one methodology is superior.

Because the brain doesn’t separate physiology from psychology.

It doesn’t separate biomechanics from neuroscience.

It doesn’t separate rehabilitation from performance.

Those are distinctions we’ve created.

Not biology.

Perhaps the future of our profession isn’t choosing between strength science and pain science.

Or rehabilitation and performance.

Or movement quality and force production.

Perhaps the future lies in recognizing that they’re all describing different aspects of the same beautifully integrated system.

The human body has never recognized the boundaries we’ve drawn between our professions.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped separating the human being?

 “Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you.”

― Scott Livingston

It is difficult to absorb an outcome you never expected.

Losing a job. Breaking a leg. Missing out on a promotion. The end of a marriage. The loss of someone you love.

None of these are experiences we seek. None of them arrive with an invitation.

Yet these moments often become the very experiences that shape us most.

That doesn’t mean there should be no pain.

Pain is real. Grief is real. Disappointment is real.

We are meant to feel them.

Our brains are constantly interpreting the world around us, trying to determine what is safe, what is dangerous, and what those experiences mean. Much of our early understanding comes from our parents, our family, our teachers, and our coaches. Over time, our own experiences begin to shape that lens.

The challenge is that we often confuse the experience with the story we create about the experience.

When something difficult happens, we naturally begin building a narrative.

Why did this happen?

Who is responsible?

What does this say about me?

If we lose a job, for example, there may be factors within our control and factors outside of it. The work is not to deny either reality. The work is to understand both.

What could I have done differently?

What was beyond my influence?

What can I learn moving forward?

Growth lives inside those questions.

But if we define the event itself as purely damaging or negative, we often create something else: a threat response.

Future situations that resemble the original experience begin to feel dangerous. We become more protective. More cautious. More guarded.

We stop exploring and start defending.

We protect rather than expand.

Over time, fear mitigation can become a way of life. It influences our decisions, our relationships, and our willingness to take risks. It narrows our world.

Growth does the opposite.

Every challenge contains an opportunity to better understand ourselves. To recognize where we contributed, what we avoided, what we overlooked, and what we might do differently next time.

Even in the loss of someone we love, there is something to learn.

We grieve because the relationship mattered.

We ache because their presence shaped us.

Their absence leaves a space that cannot be replaced, but that space can be filled with gratitude, memory, and love. We carry forward what they gave us.

None of this is easy.

The emotions matter.

The feelings matter.

But the meaning we assign to the event remains ours to choose.

The experience is real.

The circumstance is real.

What is not fixed is the story.

Every experience, no matter how difficult, offers perspective. It provides an opportunity to become more resilient, more compassionate, more self-aware, and more capable than we were before.

That is part of why we are here.

Not to avoid life.

Not to protect ourselves from every possibility of discomfort.

But to experience, to learn, and to grow.

Can life hurt us?

Absolutely.

There are real constraints and genuine hardships.

But they are not meant to become our compass.

Our compass must come from our relationship with what we experience and our willingness to learn from it.

Experience is a gift.

Don’t give it up.

Nothing happens to you.

Everything happens for you.

How might you revisit an experience that once felt like a setback and see it through a different lens?

 “Pivot….pivot…..pivot……PIVOT!”

― Ross Geller

Anyone who lived through the golden age of Thursday night television, before PVRs and long before streaming, remembers the scene.

Ross and Chandler are trying to move a couch up a narrow staircase. The couch gets stuck. Ross, convinced there must be a solution, keeps yelling:

“Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!”

As if sheer optimism and a slight adjustment will somehow make the impossible possible.

Meanwhile, Chandler has reached his limit.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

He knows exactly what’s happening. The couch isn’t going any farther.

It’s one of the most memorable scenes in television history because it’s funny, but also because it’s relatable.

Most of us have been there.

Maybe not with a couch, although many of us have carried one up a staircase while praying our friend actually measured the doorway before buying it. But we’ve all experienced that moment when something we thought would work suddenly doesn’t. The plan falls apart. The path forward disappears. The solution we were counting on no longer exists.

And then we’re left with one option.

Pivot.

The ability to adapt may be one of the defining characteristics of being human.

Think about it.

We arrive in this world with no shelter, no clothing, no tools, and a remarkably long journey before we can survive independently. Yet somehow we have become the dominant species on the planet.

Not because we’re the strongest.

Not because we’re the fastest.

Because we adapt.

We create solutions to problems that didn’t exist yesterday. We invent new tools. We revise old ideas. We change course when conditions change. We learn. We evolve. We pivot.

For our family, the past several years have been an exercise in exactly that.

The pandemic changed nearly everything about our business and our daily lives. One day we were teaching courses and hosting events in person. The next day we were doing everything online.

The constraints changed, so the solution had to change.

One day I was struggling to find guests for my podcast. The next, because everyone was sitting at home and looking for connection, I was hosting conversations with some of the biggest names in performance, rehabilitation, and coaching. Opportunities that seemed impossible suddenly became possible.

Then, just as quickly, the world shifted again.

Pivot.

The pandemic eventually faded into the background, but the lessons remained. It was perhaps the only truly global event of our lifetime. Every person on the planet experienced it in some form. Nobody escaped untouched.

Yet humanity adapted.

As we always do.

More recently, our family has found ourselves navigating another season of change.

The community has changed.

Business has changed.

Marketing has changed.

Communication has changed.

First came the explosion of social media platforms, each creating its own audience, language, and culture. Then, came artificial intelligence, introducing possibilities and challenges we are only beginning to understand.

Like every technological shift before it, there are advantages and disadvantages.

The question isn’t whether change is coming.

The question is whether we are willing to adapt to it.

Whether we can embrace the opportunities while managing the risks.

Whether we can remain curious instead of resistant.

Whether we can pivot.

That idea has become increasingly important to me this year.

A new role.

A move back to Montreal.

New challenges.

New opportunities.

A new chapter.

Not because I was searching for change for the sake of change, but because life has a way of presenting us with moments where standing still is no longer an option.

Sometimes change is chosen.

Sometimes it is imposed.

Sometimes it arrives quietly, and sometimes it crashes through the front door without warning.

Either way, we eventually find ourselves standing on the staircase, holding the couch, realizing the original plan isn’t going to work.

And that’s okay.

Because adaptation is not failure.

Changing direction is not a weakness.

Revising the plan is not giving up.

It’s often the exact thing that allows us to keep moving forward.

The key is remembering that every change creates consequences. Every new solution introduces new challenges. Every opportunity carries some degree of risk.

Upstream change always creates downstream effects.

The goal isn’t to avoid that reality.

The goal is to navigate it thoughtfully.

To make the best decision you can with the information you have.

To stay flexible.

To stay curious.

To stay moving.

So if you’re going through a season of change right now, wondering whether the next step is the right one, take comfort in knowing that adaptation is part of the human story.

It’s how we survive.

It’s how we grow.

It’s how we create better futures for ourselves and for the people around us.

And sometimes, when the couch gets stuck and the original plan falls apart, the answer really is…

Pivot.

 “Sometimes you can feel alone in a crowded room”

― Unknown

This past week, if you are a hockey fan, and perhaps even if you are not, you likely heard about the passing of former NHL star Claude Lemieux.

The hockey world was shocked because only days earlier, Claude had been at the Montreal Canadiens’ Game 3 playoff matchup against the Carolina Hurricanes at the Bell Centre. Thousands of fans watched him carry the ceremonial torch that ignited the Bell Centre and fueled the passion of the Canadiens faithful.

Claude played for several NHL teams and won multiple Stanley Cups, but many Montreal fans remember him first as a young member of the Canadiens’ 1986 Stanley Cup championship team. He was known as an agitator, a player opponents loved to hate and teammates loved to have on their side. After his playing career, he settled in Florida with his family, became involved in business, and remained connected to the game as a player agent.

I was shocked to hear of his passing.

It always hits a little closer to home when someone is near your own age.

I was even more saddened to learn that he had taken his own life.

I did not know Claude personally, nor do I know his family or the circumstances surrounding his death. What I do know is that many people who appear to be doing well on the outside are often carrying burdens that no one else can see.

We all wear masks to some degree. We reserve parts of ourselves for different people, different places, and different moments. Yet there are many who seem perfectly fine from the outside while privately struggling in ways those around them never fully understand.

Life is hard.

Business is hard.

Relationships are hard.

We all experience disappointment, loss, uncertainty, and moments of profound struggle. That has always been true. Yet today, it feels as though the pressure has intensified.

The internet and social media have created a world where appearances are often mistaken for reality. We are surrounded by images of success, achievement, happiness, and perfection. It becomes easy to believe that everyone else is thriving while we alone are struggling.

Too many people find themselves trying to live up to an image rather than a reality. They measure themselves against carefully curated moments instead of meaningful lives. The weight of those expectations can become overwhelming.

For those who have lived in the spotlight, these pressures can be even greater.

Athletes are often celebrated for their toughness, resilience, and ability to endure. They are taught to play through pain, push through adversity, and never show weakness. Those qualities may help someone succeed on the ice, but they can also make it difficult to ask for help when life becomes overwhelming.

Sometimes the strongest people are carrying the heaviest burdens.

Sometimes the people who seem to have everything together are fighting battles no one knows about.

Sometimes you can feel completely alone in a crowded room.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with elite athletes, coaches, executives, and high performers from many different walks of life. One thing I have learned is that success does not protect anyone from loneliness, anxiety, depression, self doubt, or despair. In some cases, the very traits that help people achieve extraordinary things can make it harder for them to reach out when they need support.

The human psyche is a fragile thing.

Our minds can be pulled into dark places. Our mental health can be crushed beneath the weight of our own stories, our own expectations, and our own perceptions of what we believe we should be.

Claude’s passing is a powerful reminder that every person we encounter is carrying a story we know nothing about.

The person we speak with.

The person we work beside.

The person we pass in the grocery store.

The person sitting next to us at dinner.

We have no idea what may be happening behind their eyes.

They may not need our opinion.

They may not need our judgment.

They may simply need our kindness.

Our patience.

Our understanding.

Or simply our presence.

We are quick to judge these days.

Quick to assume.

Quick to form opinions without knowing the story.

Perhaps we would all be better served by extending a little more grace.

A little more compassion.

A little more understanding.

Because none of us truly knows what another person is carrying.

Be kind.

Be present.

You never know how much it may matter.

 “Injuries don’t define your career, how you come back from them does….”

― Unknown

For years now, one of the biggest issues I have seen in rehabilitation and performance is the gap between returning an athlete to participation and truly returning them to performance.

I was recently at a workshop with my good friend Matt Jordan, who was presenting on force deck testing and how we can use data to better understand asymmetries, loading strategies, and readiness for return to performance after injury.

One of the major themes discussed was the difference between return to play and return to performance.

Those are not the same thing.

Far too often, athletes are medically cleared before they are truly prepared for the demands of sport. The knee looks good. The timeline has been respected. Strength has improved. The athlete reports feeling “good.”

But underneath that, there are often still major gaps in movement quality, force absorption, deceleration ability, confidence, and adaptability.

And eventually, those gaps often show themselves.

Sometimes the athlete re-injures the same knee. Sometimes they injure the opposite side. Sometimes the compensation patterns begin to move up the chain and we start seeing hip issues, SI joint irritation, low back problems, or thoracic spine stiffness.

I have seen this repeatedly throughout my career.

The reality is that returning from ACL reconstruction is not simply about producing force again. It is also about learning to absorb force again. It is about restoring confidence, movement options, variability, and adaptability.

A lot of athletes become stiffer after injury.

They land differently. They cut differently. They decelerate differently.

And often they do not even realize they are doing it.

Research from clinicians and researchers like Clare Ardern has highlighted the importance of psychological readiness in successful return to sport after ACL reconstruction. Athletes may be physically present, but still moving protectively. The brain remembers where danger occurred, and certain positions or actions can become associated with threat.

That matters.

Because the nervous system changes movement behavior under threat.

Research from Paul Hodges and Gregor Tucker on motor adaptation to pain has helped demonstrate that prior pain changes movement strategies. The body reorganizes how it moves in an attempt to protect itself.

This can lead to:

• stiffer landings
• hesitation during cutting
• altered trunk mechanics
• reduced knee flexion
• shifting away from the involved side
• reduced movement variability

Protection narrows movement options.

And sport is chaos.

The athlete must be able to adapt dynamically to changing environments, speeds, fatigue, reactions, and uncertainty.

This is one of the reasons I believe deceleration is such an important and often overlooked skill after ACL reconstruction.

Many athletes regain propulsive capabilities relatively well. They can squat, jump, and produce force.

But accepting force is different.

Deceleration is a skill.

Good movement is not just about producing force. It is about absorbing it.

One of the most important things I have observed over my career is that athletes often struggle to truly “accept the ground” again after ACL reconstruction. They redirect load. They shorten the deceleration phase. They stiffen. They avoid positions subconsciously.

And if we are not assessing those qualities carefully, we may miss important deficits that still exist beneath the surface.

This becomes even more important when we consider how ACL injury changes sensory and proprioceptive input.

The ACL is not just a passive structure. It contributes sensory information to the brain regarding joint position and movement. Surgery changes that sensory environment. Graft harvesting changes it further.

The brain now has different information coming from the knee.

And inputs shape outputs.

If the nervous system no longer fully trusts the information it receives from the joint, movement expression changes.

The athlete has to relearn how to organize movement around a different sensory reality.

This is why I believe post-ACL rehabilitation never truly ends.

There is always maintenance.

There is always continued adaptation.

There is always ongoing exposure to variability, fatigue, deceleration, reactivity, and chaos.

Because movement is never static.

Researchers in ecological dynamics and movement variability have long emphasized that human movement is adaptive and self-organizing. No two sporting actions are ever exactly the same. Healthy systems adapt dynamically to changing constraints and environments.

Rigid systems struggle in chaos.

And often after injury, rigidity becomes the nervous system’s solution.

Our role as practitioners is to gradually restore movement options, confidence, variability, and adaptability so the athlete can once again solve movement problems fluidly and efficiently.

That is what true return to performance requires.

Not just tissue healing.

Not just timelines.

Not just isolated strength.

But adaptable human movement.

On June 14th in Montreal, we’ll be spending an entire day diving into these concepts during our ACL Reconditioning Intensive at Elite Conditioning.

We’ll discuss:

• deceleration and force absorption
• asymmetry and compensation
• sensory and proprioceptive considerations
• variability and adaptability
• return-to-performance preparation
• fatigue and chaotic environments
• practical assessment and programming strategies

Because the goal is not simply getting athletes back to participation.

The goal is preparing them to thrive once they return.

Maybe we’ll see you there! 

www.ReconditioningHQ.com

 “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

― Wayne Dryer

Perspective…

I am often asked, as I was again this past week while back home in Ottawa for a workshop, “Do you miss working in the NHL?”

For those reading who may not know my history, I worked in the NHL as an Athletic Therapist and Strength and Conditioning Coach from 1998 to 2009. My first year in the league was with the New York Islanders organization, but after a chaotic season and an uncertain future, I accepted the same role with the New York Rangers.

After two seasons with the Rangers, and a management and coaching change following my first year, I found myself out of a job in the spring of 2001.

Uncertain of what was next, I spent that summer roaming Manhattan and, somewhat randomly, took a Pilates instructor certification for fun.

Then, in August of 2001, I was hired by the Montreal Canadiens and returned home to the city where I had gone to school and built much of my early career through the 1990s.

My first days with the organization were marked by learning that our captain, Saku Koivu, had stage-three cancer, followed shortly after by the events of 9/11. Suffice to say, it was a heavy beginning to the next chapter of my life.

Back to the workshop.

This time the question came a little differently:

“Do you regret leaving the Canadiens now that the team is doing so well?”

If you are not a hockey fan, or specifically a Canadiens fan, you may not realize the organization has spent much of the last thirty-plus years trying to rediscover its former glory. Since their last Stanley Cup in 1993, there have been flashes of competitiveness, but very few moments where the team was truly considered a serious Cup contender.

But right now, they are deep in the process of creating something quite special. The youngest team in the playoffs, a rookie coach, Marty St.Louis, who continues to impress as he grows into his role, and a feeling around the city that something magical might just happen sooner rather than later.

However, when I arrived in 2001, the organization had been dealing with three straight seasons of over 500 man games lost due to injury. To put that in perspective, the league average was around 250. It is hard to win when much of your starting lineup is in the clinic instead of on the ice.

Part of why I was hired was to help reduce that number.

Over the years, we brought the team average down to roughly 180, including one season as low as 108. We improved availability significantly, but improved health does not automatically equal championships.

Those years were a mixed bag. Aging stars. Injured stars. Inconsistent drafting. Moments of hope mixed with stretches of frustration.

One season, though, it felt like something special might happen.

Sheldon Souray had returned from wrist surgery and was having a tremendous year. Alex Kovalev was fully engaged and playing brilliant hockey. Saku Koivu, after his cancer recovery, was in his prime as a leader and player.

We went up 2-0 on Carolina in the playoffs and the city was alive.

Then Saku suffered a serious eye injury.

We lost four straight.

Carolina went on to win the Stanley Cup.

That is sport sometimes. Tiny moments that change everything.

I remained with the Canadiens until the summer of 2009. The year before, my wife and I had welcomed our first and only child into the world. I was already forty-five years old, and suddenly life felt different. Priorities shifted.

I had an opportunity to move into Olympic sport, and I decided it was time to leave professional hockey behind.

So when people ask me if I miss it, the answer is layered.

I absolutely reflect fondly on the camaraderie, the relationships, and the incredible energy that surrounds a city when a team is winning. There is truly nothing quite like playoff hockey in Montreal. I experienced it a handful of times, and when that city comes alive, it is unforgettable.

But I also remember the heaviness.

Nostalgia has a funny way of softening the edges of reality. Professional sport is far more losing than winning, and when things are not going well, everyone around the team carries that burden.

The Islanders, to put it politely, were a gong show. My first season in the league became an exercise in humility and disappointment. A twenty-seven-day training camp in Lake Placid instead of the normal seven. Missing key players. Constant instability. A season that felt cursed from the start.

The Rangers had resources and star power, but also disappointment. We missed the playoffs. There were coaching and management changes. Mark Messier returned. Theo Fleury arrived. Mike Richter tore his ACL again. Expectations were enormous, but success never followed.

Then suddenly, no playoffs and no job.

Life in professional sport is a strange mix of glamour and grind. Beautiful hotels, charter flights, incredible restaurants, and world-class arenas blended with relentless pressure, exhaustion, uncertainty, and emotional swings.

When you are winning, it can feel magical.

When you are losing, it can feel very dark.

To put it into perspective, if I had stayed in the NHL from 1998 until today, I would have spent twenty-eight years in the league and never won a Stanley Cup. I would have experienced the Final only once.

The current Head Athletic Therapist of the Canadiens, Jim Ramsay, who I worked with in New York, has spent thirty-six years in the NHL and has only reached the Final once as well.

The former Head Athletic Therapist in Montreal, Graham Rynbend, dedicated close to twenty-seven years to the organization and never won one either.

That is how hard it is to win.

Winning is not everything, but it certainly makes life feel lighter.

I loved my years in the league. They were meaningful, unforgettable, and helped shape so many experiences and relationships that followed.

Do I miss it?

No, I do not.

I look back with clarity now. I know exactly what it was. I grew tremendously through those experiences, and there are countless stories I could tell about my life in the game, but I will leave most of them where they belong.

Would I enjoy being there right now while the team is finally building momentum again?

Of course.

But in order to experience the possibility of winning now, I would have had to live through twenty-eight years of everything else that came before it.

I chose a different path.

And I have no regrets.

Now, I simply cheer for the people I know who continue the pursuit.

And even now, there is still a lot of real estate between today and someone hoisting the Stanley Cup.

Nothing is guaranteed.

So I will enjoy the ride from my couch.

Go Habs Go.

 “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”

― Walt Disney

It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and it had me scrolling through my picture library looking for photos to use as a tribute to all the mothers who have been part of our journey.

Thank you, by the way.

Maybe that’s the first place to begin when talking about action and the danger of waiting.

I don’t think anyone on this planet truly knows or feels ready to become a parent, especially a mother. Giving birth is no picnic, and everything that comes afterward is always being experienced for the very first time.

If we waited until we were ready, many of us would never have children at all. And we all know where that leads.

And that’s the point.

Don’t wait.

As I thumbed through old photos (that’s old school for scrolling), I started realizing just how much I’ve done, seen, tried, failed at, explored, and attempted again.

Life is not really about achieving as much as it is about exploring what’s possible.

Everyone wonders why we are here. What is our purpose?

The truth is that life itself is the gift.

A gift of opportunity.
A gift of possibility.

We get to do this.
We get to try.

The doing is in the being, and the being is in the doing. They coexist. We try things, we experience them, and through those experiences we discover where we find joy, meaning, frustration, heartbreak, excitement, and growth.

We feel it all.

That’s what our senses are for. They allow us to experience what it means to be alive.

But far too often, we are consumed by either the beginning or the end, instead of the experience itself. We let the fear of negative outcomes stop us from moving forward, or we become so attached to positive outcomes that we lose touch with what is happening right now.

Too often, we convince ourselves there will be a better time.

That this thing can wait.
That we can wait.

But time runs out.
It always does.

And none of us knows how much sand remains in the hourglass.

That book you wanted to write…

Write it.

That trip you wanted to take…

Take it.

That friend you wanted to call…

Call them.

That conversation you wanted to have…

Have it.

That course you wanted to create…

Create it.

That person you wanted to become…

Become them.

There is no reason to wait.

Waiting is like a mirage. Everything looks interesting, but nothing is ever truly experienced.

Mark Twain once said, “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

Imagine the possibilities created by your actions, not your inactions.

Walt Disney had a dream. He wanted to build a place where people could experience joy, even if only for a day. A place where imagination, wonder, and possibility came alive.

One could argue that it has become far too commercialized and materialized over time. I understand that perspective.

But I still prefer to recognize the intention behind it.

The belief that people could imagine something greater.
The belief that possibility matters.
The belief that dreams are worth pursuing despite obstacles, setbacks, criticism, or doubt.

That is the essence of action.

The willingness to move toward possibility before certainty arrives.

The key to overcoming impossibility is often found in a single moment of action that sees past doubt and chooses movement anyway.

As Pablo Picasso once said:

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

So…

What will you do today?

 “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, pave another one”

― Dolly Parton

Lately, I’ve found myself stepping back and looking at things a little differently.

What I’m beginning to understand is this.

Nothing really happens to us.
We just make it about us.

Life unfolds the way it unfolds. Events come and go. Moments rise and fall. But somewhere along the way, we attach meaning to those moments. We build a story. We assign a label. We decide whether something is good or bad, fair or unfair, meant for us or against us.

And in doing so, we create the weight we end up carrying.

If we could learn to let life be what it is, without immediately interpreting it, analyzing it, or personalizing it, we would probably feel a lot lighter. Not because life becomes easier, but because we stop adding to it.

The same holds true with people.

If we allowed others to simply be who they are, without filtering them through our own expectations or judgments, we might find their company easier to enjoy. People are different. That’s not something to fix. It’s something to observe.

Observation creates space.
Judgment creates tension.

When we observe, we learn. When we allow, we open ourselves to something we might not have seen otherwise. It may not always align with how we would do things, but that doesn’t make it wrong. It just makes it different.

And then there’s the life we’re living.

The reality is, the life we have right now is the one we’ve created, whether consciously or not. If we want something different, we don’t need to wait. We need to move.

Action creates change.
Inaction preserves the status quo.

Nature doesn’t stand still. It moves toward entropy. And so do we. If we don’t choose a direction, one will be chosen for us.

That’s often what feeling stuck really is. Not an external force holding us in place, but an internal hesitation to step forward.

It’s easy to point outward. Circumstances, responsibilities, other people. But when you strip it all down, what holds us back most often is ourselves.

That’s not meant to be harsh. It’s meant to be freeing.

Because if it’s on us, then it’s also within our control to change.

No one is coming to save you.
But that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.

In fact, one of the best parts of this whole experience is that we get to share it. We get to walk alongside others, learn from them, lean on them, and contribute to something beyond ourselves.

There’s also something I’ve come to appreciate about loss.

When something leaves our life, we tend to focus on what’s gone. That’s natural. But what we often don’t see, at least not right away, is what that loss creates space for.

Something new.
Someone new.
A different version of ourselves.

That doesn’t make loss easy. Especially when it involves people we love. But it does remind us that life continues to move, and that movement always brings possibility with it.

Which leads me to something else.

You are always in the right place at the right time.

Not because everything is perfect, but because everything that’s happening is part of a path that’s still unfolding. We rarely understand it in the moment. Most of the time, we only see it looking back.

And through all of it, one thing remains constant.

You are always choosing.

Even when you think you’re not. Even when you hesitate, avoid, or stand still. That, too, is a choice.

Life is a series of forks in the road. None of them come with guarantees. None of them come with certainty. They simply come with direction.

And once you begin to accept that, something interesting happens.

You start to realize that control, as we often define it, doesn’t really exist.

We can influence. We can prepare. We can respond.

But we can’t control outcomes the way we think we can.

And once you let go of that need, there’s a certain freedom that comes with it.

You become more present.
More aware.
More open to what is.

And if you find yourself in a moment that doesn’t feel right, you can remind yourself that it won’t last.

Another moment is coming.
Another choice is waiting.

And maybe the most important realization of all.

Don’t hold back your capacity to love.

Not for yourself. Not for others. Not based on whether someone has “earned” it in your eyes.

Just allow it.

Because when you do, it tends to find its way back to you, often in ways you didn’t expect.