Chronic pain · long-term pain · Amsterdam
Chronic pain isn’t chronic
You’ve been in pain for months or years. You’ve tried everything. And somewhere along the way, someone told you you’d just have to learn to live with it. I say: no. Chronic only means your pain has lasted longer than three months. It says nothing about how long it will stay.
What you may have been told
- “Your back is just worn out.”
- “That comes with your age.”
- “Take it easy and don’t lift anything heavy.”
- “You’ll have to learn to live with it.”
Well meant, but it keeps you small. Pain isn’t a damage meter. With long-term pain, your alarm is set too sensitively. And what’s set too sensitively can be reset.
Short answer: pain is called chronic when it lasts longer than three months or keeps coming back. That’s a measure of time, not a verdict. With most long-term pain the body isn’t damaged, but overprotective: the pain system has become more sensitive than necessary. By understanding what’s happening, changing your behaviour and getting stronger step by step, that system can calm down again.
What chronic pain actually is
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) calls pain chronic once it lasts longer than three months. By then the original tissue has usually long healed. What remains is a protective mechanism that won’t switch off: your nervous system reacts faster, your muscles tense up sooner and your brain links certain movements to danger.
That’s why your pain feels very real, while a scan shows little. Both are true. Your pain is real. Your body isn’t broken.
The problem isn’t your body, it’s the approach
For years your pain has been treated as something that needs to go away. Massaged, needled, stretched, rested. Always from the outside, always at the painful spot. And it keeps coming back. Not because you’re a hopeless case, but because nobody looked at the cause: how you deal with your body.
The UK guideline for chronic pain (NICE NG193) also puts active approaches first: exercise and learning how to deal with pain. That’s exactly the combination I work with.
Three patterns that keep long-term pain going
- Avoiding: you stay away from movements that might hurt. Your body becomes less resilient and your brain even more cautious.
- Forcing: you grit your teeth and train or work through the pain, until it goes wrong again. Then comes a period of rest, and the cycle starts over.
- Ignoring: you miss the signals of stress, lack of sleep or overload, until your body tells you.
I know them from experience. For two years I went from practitioner to practitioner with a back injury. Only when I started training and changed my behaviour did I recover completely.
The DYBS method · Decode Your Body’s Signals
How I tackle long-term pain
01
Understand
We map everything out: your complaint, what you’ve tried, your work, sleep and stress. You learn what’s happening in your body, so fear makes way for understanding.
02
Discover
Strength training as a mirror. Under controlled load we see how your body and brain respond, and which pattern holds you back. Often in the first session you’ll do something you haven’t dared to in a long time.
03
Build
12 weeks of 1-on-1 training with a clear progression. Every session gives you one action point. You learn when to push and when to step back, so you can carry on independently.
Client review
“Everyone recommended all sorts of things, except: make your body stronger. With Desley it felt good within a few sessions. When people ask how my back is now, I say: no problems at all.”
Fabienne, client · 8 years of recurring lower back pain, now pain-free · translated from Dutch
Questions about chronic pain
When is pain called chronic?
When pain lasts longer than three months or keeps coming back. That’s the international definition. It only says how long your pain has lasted, not how long it will stay.
I’ve had pain for years. Isn’t it too late?
No. Fabienne had eight years of recurring lower back pain and is now pain-free. How long you’ve had pain says little about how much can still change. A system that has become too sensitive can also calm down again.
Is this the same as physiotherapy?
No. I don’t treat and I don’t diagnose. I look at your whole situation, coach you 1-on-1 through strength training and help you change the behaviour that keeps your complaint going. If you’re seeing a physio, I’m happy to work together.
Can I train if I’ve had pain for a long time?
Usually yes, and it’s often the solution. During training the pain can be at most a 3 or 4 out of 10, and the sensitivity should settle within 24 to 48 hours. Within those limits you get stronger without your complaint getting worse.
Desley Baars is a personal trainer and strength coach for long-term pain in Amsterdam-West. He is not a doctor and does not diagnose. If you have severe or unexplained symptoms, such as radiating pain with numbness, loss of strength or night pain that doesn’t go away, see your GP first.
I don’t promise you a miracle
I do promise that after 12 weeks you’ll know why your pain is there, what you can do about it, and that you’ll trust your body again. It starts with a free movement assessment at Training Boutique, Marnixstraat 232K, Amsterdam-West.
Read more: Back pain · Shoulder pain · Knee pain · Personal trainer Amsterdam