Inquisitive.me

What is your limiting factor?

Is it really strength?

Is it coordination? Stamina? Mobility?

Or is it your nervous system?

I regularly see patients who don’t primarily lack strength, stamina, coordination or mobility. Their nervous system is simply on high alert.

And when your system is already highly aroused, more isn’t always better.

Sometimes, less is exactly what you need.

You can train. You can do your exercises. You can push yourself to keep moving—and yet nothing seems to improve.

Not because movement is bad for you, but because the way you are moving keeps confirming what your nervous system already suspects:

This isn’t safe.

Pain and protective tension can change how we move. Movements become smaller, slower and more cautious. Muscles stiffen. The body begins avoiding positions it once handled without a second thought.

That protection is useful.

If you injure yourself, you want your nervous system to stop you from immediately loading the injured area as if nothing happened. The problem begins when the protection remains long after it has stopped being helpful.

I currently have a young patient who moves like an 80-year-old.

Not because he lacks the physical capacity to move differently, but because his system has learned to treat almost every movement as a potential threat. His body is capable of more, yet his nervous system rarely allows him to access that capacity.

And this isn’t as rare as you might think.

It can happen after an injury. It can happen after days, weeks or months of pain. It can also be reinforced by frightening diagnoses, alarming social media posts and the constant message that our bodies are fragile.

But they aren’t.

Watch a ski race, a Formula 1 driver survive a crash or a climber recover from a fall, and you’ll get a sense of what the human body can tolerate.

I’ve had skiing and climbing falls that looked as though they should have injured me. Yet I got up and walked away.

Our bodies aren’t indestructible. But they are much more adaptable and resilient than we often give them credit for.

And yet, many people become afraid of lifting, bending or twisting. We blame posture, age—or both—for things our bodies have simply become less accustomed to doing.

Neither your age nor your posture automatically makes you fragile.

But avoiding movement can gradually reduce your capacity and reinforce the belief that movement is dangerous. The less you do, the less familiar it becomes. The less familiar it becomes, the more threatening it may feel.

However, simply adding more movement doesn’t automatically calm an overprotective nervous system.

Sometimes it increases the alarm.

That’s what happened with my young patient. Asking him to move more wasn’t enough. We had to find a dosage his nervous system could tolerate.

So we started with tiny movements.

Enough to give his system a new experience, but not enough to overwhelm it. Enough to gently challenge the prediction of danger while still creating a sense of safety.

Finding that dosage is difficult.

It’s like walking along a narrow ridge.

To one side, you avoid so much that your world becomes smaller and your capacity continues to decline. To the other, you push so hard that every attempt confirms the nervous system’s belief that movement is dangerous.

The useful path lies somewhere in between.

But each tolerable movement makes the ridge a little wider.

Each successful repetition creates evidence that movement might be safer than expected. Gradually, the nervous system becomes less protective. Movements become easier. Your available options increase.

Eventually, the ridge may become wide enough that you no longer feel as though one wrong step will send you over the edge.

The goal isn’t always to do more.

It’s to find the amount that allows your system to learn.

🧪 Let’s Experiment

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You don’t widen the ridge by avoiding every edge—
or by repeatedly falling from it.

Too little movement can make your world smaller. Too much can reinforce the feeling that movement is dangerous. Your task is to explore the space between them.

🎯 Try This:

Think of one movement you’ve been avoiding and create three versions:

• An easy version you know you can manage
• A challenging but tolerable version
• A version that currently feels like too much

Start in the middle.

Observe what happens during the movement, shortly afterward and the following day. Then adjust the dosage based on what your body actually did—not only on what you feared it might do.

🧠 Final Thought:

Every manageable experience makes the ridge a little wider.

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