Who is Jayburd?

The summer before PT school, I almost quit.

I'd seen three physical therapists, got an MRI that showed nothing, and spent six months in appointments that didn't help. I was beyond frustrated.

Not one practitioner I talked to knew how to help me stay in the gym.

After competing in powerlifting in 2017, I got hit with injury after injury. I stopped training and tried to navigate our broken healthcare system alone. Every practitioner had a different answer. Most of them told me things that had to be "fixed" before I could get back under the bar. It took a year and a half to lift at full strength again.

And that wasn't my first bad experience with PT. I've dealt with injuries since elementary school, and honestly, I hated physical therapy as a kid. I was told to stop squatting, that running would ruin my knees, and that I should give up skateboarding.

What actually fixed my knees years later? Heavy squats.

After 13+ years in fitness and physical therapy, I know how much damage those beliefs cause. There's no reason you can't lift unrestricted, play the sports you love, and live the life you want. There's no reason you should lose training to aches and pains you were told to just live with.

As lifters, we need the gym to stay sane. When pain takes that away, we spiral. I know, because it happened to me.