When Pain Meets Passion

I was a pitcher growing up, playing at the high school and college level.  I was passionate about it.  I went to bed thinking about pitching. I woke up in the morning thinking about pitching.  My days were centered around becoming a better pitcher.  

For more than 10 years, pitching a baseball was the center of my life.  My passion for throwing a 5 oz. ball over and over leaked into the rest of my life.  My family traveled for baseball, any girlfriend that I had was forced into supporting my baseball lifestyle, any academic or career opportunities had to fit around my next chance to pitch.  Where I went to college was centered around pitching.  It was an all-inclusive experience into total obsession.   

I read every book there was on pitching.  Training for pitching, pitching grips, pitching mechanics.  I was learning about kinematic sequencing when I was 14, simply to understand how to be a better pitcher myself.  

I was on pitching forums, engaging with other people who shared my obsession.  Together, we tossed ideas around being a better pitcher.  I surrounded myself with coaches and players who wanted to talk pitching.  My group of friends shared my passion and together we spent each and every day growing up playing, practicing and talking baseball.  

When I went to college, my obsession only heightened.  From day 1, I was uncomfortable with being away from home, with the social pressures of being a college kid and from the fear of taking another step closer to the end of my playing career.  It was now a game of becoming a professional pitcher or risk losing my only true passion in life.

The trouble was, I wasn’t a professional pitcher.  If I wanted to be, my passion would have to escalate, my workload would have to increase and my distractions would have to disappear.  I transferred twice in my first two years and switched my major three times, again in an effort to base my studies around becoming a better pitcher.  I was doubling down on my obsession and saw only one way to success, being the best pitcher that I could be.  

I tried different training programs, one season losing fifty pounds over the offseason in an effort to be in better shape.  When that didn’t work, I pounded cheesecake and lifted weights in an effort to put weight back on.  My training program was constantly changing.  As I learned more about training through my college curriculum, I sought to apply it to my own career, leading to making adjustments to my college strength coach’s program, adding additional training days and generally pounding my body into the ground.  

What happened during this time was my body started responding to the stress I put on it in all the wrong ways. My first summer after college I had back pain to the extent of not being able to stand up in the morning.  My sophomore year included only a few innings pitched and the rest of my time spent in the training room taking care of a biceps tendon flaring up or an elbow tendonitis or a muscle spasm.  I couldn’t stay healthy and I couldn’t understand why.  

With every injury, I grew more internally focused.  I read more books, I practiced more mechanics, I trained harder in the gym.  I was convinced I could work and think my way out of it.  I didn’t trust the trainers around me, nor the coaches and definitely not the players.  I had the answers and if I listened to others, it would only hurt me.  

I remember one day during my 2nd year of college, sitting in my dorm room reading a book about a former major leaguer dealing with injuries that derailed his career.  In it, he detailed overwhelming anxiety that he experienced, along with endless frustration, broken relationships and dead end pitching gigs.  I found myself relating to everything he said.  It gave me comfort to know that others experienced the same thing as me. 

The comfort was short-lived as I spent the next few months in and out of the training room managing a throwing arm that refused to feel right.  Some of the pain was real but I’m also certain that some was being conjured up in my mind as a reason I couldn’t improve.  I saw the writing on the wall that I was running out of time. My pitching obsession was coming to a close and I couldn’t stop it.  

My senior year of college had the potential of being the best baseball year of my life.  I came into the year coming off a successful summer ball experience, throwing harder than I ever had and in the best shape of my life.  I was ready to go.  

The Fall saw me impress with flashes of what got me into pitching in college in the first place.  My fastball was faster than it had ever been, my change-up was a plus pitch and my body felt healthy.  I was excited for every weekend.  I knew I was riding high and wanted the experience to last forever.  

As my last year of college wore on, problems arose.  My arm started bugging me and before I knew it, I was back in the training room, trying to figure out an elbow that hurt with every throw.  

I was devastated, as the season got closer and closer, I found myself rushing to prepare, ignoring signs and symptoms and pushing harder on the field and in the training room.  Time wasn’t on my side and my worst fear was waking up to my last day as a pitcher and feeling that I could have done more.  

My extra work was not without repercussions.  My body was breaking down.  Combining my workload with sleepless nights and an endless feeling of anxiety during the day led to pain creeping up elsewhere in my body.  I was constantly nursing back pain or shoulder pain, or both.  

Push came to shove in the final months of my senior season.  With my family and friends constantly reaching out to support me, I finally found my way to the social services building at Keene State where I signed up for a counseling session.   

I was skeptical going in.  I hadn’t dealt with this type of anxiety in my life before and it felt weird asking for help on it.  

What ensued was one of the most fulfilling hours of my life.  I poured my heart and soul out into another person.  The hour sent me to every extreme on the emotional spectrum. From crying to laughing to anger and fear.  

I’d like to say that after that session, my senior season turned around and I finally lived up to the expectations that I had set for myself.  It didn’t and I didn’t, but it started me on a path of being more introspective, especially with chronic pain. 

There is no doubt in my mind that some of the pain and discomfort that I dealt with throwing a baseball was completely in my head.  To me, it felt real and my performance suffered because of it.  I’ve seen my struggles in others and my experience with chronic pain has led me to the understanding that regardless of there being a physiological reason for the pain or if it’s one of those “imagined” injuries, the pain is real.  

Finding causation to pain that theoretically shouldn’t be there is one of the most frustrating elements of my work.  It causes me to question well-understood principles and gives me the perspective that there is still so much that we don’t understand about chronic pain.  

I still deal with aches and pains, even years after my epiphany of the multifactorial challenge that is chronic and acute pain. Coaching week in and week out takes a toll on my body and my knees and back still struggle to stay functionally sound after long days of endless moving around a weight room.   

Now when I deal with pain, I ask others and I look inward.  This two-step process has helped me to improve my capability on a daily basis.  By being surrounded by intelligent and caring people, I’m able to get outside of myself and find answers that I never could have seen alone.  

Looking inward helps me to realize other factors that may contribute to my pain.  Using objective data like resting heart rate and heart rate variability can help me determine the type of physical or emotional stress I may be under and taking a hard look at my journal entries over the previous days can help me determine if there is external stress that is affecting my recovery capacity.  By having a combination of objective and subjective introspective measures, I’ve found myself to recover from pain faster than previously.  

If I could go back and change one thing about my playing career, I would have spent more time reaching out to my support system and less time listening to my internal dialogue. I try to apply that today to my work, reaching out to fellow professionals when I’m struggling with a client or with work-life balance.  The network that keeps me going every day is my most valuable possession.  

Here’s to diving deeper every day, trusting others and throwing gas.