Propel Fitness Journal, Issue 077
You felt something go.
So now you’re waiting.
Waiting on the MRI. Waiting on the appointment. Waiting for a doctor in a white coat to tell you it’s okay to move again.
And every day you wait, you’re paying for it — in ways that never show up on the invoice.
The Meter’s Running
Start with the costs you can see.
The appointment itself. And if you’re one of the many reading this from outside Canada, that clearance visit isn’t free.
The days or weeks it takes to get the scan, get the reading, get back in the room.
Then the cost you can’t see.
Detraining.
Tissue that stops getting loaded starts losing capacity — fast. Every week on the sidelines, your baseline drops a little lower. The gap you’ll have to bridge to get back to your training gets a little wider.
Waiting doesn’t hold your position. It erodes it.
The Note You’re Waiting For
Ask what you’re actually waiting to hear.
In most cases it’s a doctor saying some version of: “Yeah, that sounds like a job for physio.”
That’s the box they tick.
They’re not going to build your rehab plan — that’s not their training. They refer it out. To someone like me.
And the one thing you think you need them for — ruling out the serious stuff — physios screen for that too. Red-flag assessment is part of the job.
Some days I feel like I went to grad school for a master’s degree in giving people permission to move.
When Waiting Is the Right Call
There’s a short list where stepping back and getting seen first isn’t optional.
Open fracture. Active organ sepsis. Heart attack. Stroke.
Those aren’t training decisions. Those are emergencies, and exercise isn’t part of the conversation.
But the disc that’s angry. The back that seized. The shoulder that’s been barking for a month. The cranky tendon.
None of those are reasons to stop moving.
They’re reasons to change the dose.
Start Now. Smaller.
Starting doesn’t mean grinding back into the thing that hurt you.
It means stepping back from the intensity that’s driving the pain — then moving in a version your body tolerates today.
And building that back up, deliberately, until the demands you can handle meet the demands you want.
That’s the whole process. Graded exposure. Bridge the gap.
You don’t need permission. You need a starting load.
The MRI won’t move the bar for you.
The note doesn’t build capacity.
And every day spent waiting for clearance is a day you could’ve spent closing the gap.
Start now. Start smaller. But start.
– Dan
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