Pain Is Inevitable, Suffering Is Optional: David Olney

David Olney spent years working as a remedial therapist with elite athletes before becoming a university professor and consultant who worked with Special Operations Command, and currently working as a strategist with Talked About Marketing. He’s got a unique perspective on injury recovery because he’s seen how professional athletes, amateur athletes, and elite soldiers all handle setbacks differently.

David talks about why professional athletes whose entire identity is wrapped up in sport often struggle more with chronic pain and longer recovery times compared to people who have other things in their lives. He explains what he learned from elite soldiers, who recover remarkably well from terrible injuries because they know their first career ends in their mid-thirties and they’ve already built transferable skills for their next move.

The conversation covers stoicism, the idea that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional, and why putting all your eggs in the sport basket makes you fragile. David also shares his own experience giving up violin because of wrist pain from using his cane, and how he realised the teaching skills he’d built were transferable to his academic career. If you’re recovering from injury and worried about who you are without sport, this episode gives you a different way to think about it.

Key insights:

• Athletes whose entire identity is sport struggle more with injuries. Professional players whose only job is their sport face more chronic pain and longer recovery times, possibly because of the psychological pressure.
• Elite soldiers recover remarkably well from serious injuries because they know soldiering ends in their mid-thirties. They’ve already built transferable skills for their second career.
• Sport is about transferable skills, not just medals. Discipline, teamwork, dealing with pressure – these work in corporate environments, emergency services, anywhere you apply them.
• Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. This stoic principle helps separate the physical reality of injury from the mental spiral that can come with it.
• Your competitive drive doesn’t disappear when you find other interests. Having art, relationships, and academic focus outside kayaking made AJ less fragile, not less competitive.

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