Table of Contents
My Body, The Fault Line
For 15 years, I’ve made my living as a kinesiologist, a specialist in human movement.
My days are spent in the world of biomechanics and physiology, helping people navigate the complex landscape of pain, injury, and strength.
I’ve designed hundreds of rehabilitation programs, coached clients back from debilitating injuries, and preached the gospel of safe, progressive resistance training.
I was the expert people came to when their bodies felt broken.
Which made my own private reality all the more galling.
Despite my professional knowledge, I was losing a slow, grinding war against the osteoarthritis in my own knees.
I knew the playbook by heart because I had helped write it for others.
I followed every piece of “standard advice” to the letter.
I was a model patient, a textbook case of doing everything right.
Yet, I was trapped in a maddening cycle: two steps forward, three steps back.
A few weeks of promising progress—less pain, a bit more strength—would inevitably be shattered by a sudden, agonizing flare-up that would send me limping back to square one, physically and emotionally defeated.1
I remember one particular Tuesday with painful clarity.
It was supposed to be a good day.
My knees felt decent, the morning stiffness had faded, and I was determined to have a productive lower-body session.
I executed my plan with the precision of a surgeon.
I performed a meticulous 10-minute warm-up, complete with dynamic stretches and range-of-motion exercises to lubricate the joints.4
I loaded the bar for squats with a weight I knew was manageable, something I could handle for 3 sets of 10 repetitions with what I judged to be perfect form.6
Throughout the workout, I was hyper-vigilant.
I “listened to my body,” the cardinal rule we tell everyone with arthritis.
I felt the deep, satisfying burn of muscular effort, but no sharp, stabbing joint pain—the kind that signals you to stop immediately.8
I finished the session feeling tired but successful.
I had followed the blueprint perfectly.
The next morning, the blueprint lay in ruins.
I woke to a hot, swollen, and excruciatingly painful left knee.
The flare-up was so severe I could barely put weight on it.
It wasn’t just the physical pain that was so demoralizing; it was the profound sense of betrayal.
I had done everything right, and my body had punished me for it anyway.
The very thing I told my clients would help them—careful, controlled strength training—felt like a trap.
That day, the gym transformed from a place of healing into a place of fear.
This wasn’t just an emotional reaction; it was the onset of what researchers call kinesiophobia—a debilitating fear of movement born from a sense of vulnerability to pain or injury.10
My body no longer felt like a reliable structure I could strengthen.
It felt like a building with a hidden fault line, ready to crumble without warning at the slightest tremor.
This experience forced me to confront a terrifying question that sits at the heart of this article: What if the problem isn’t our bodies? What if the blueprint itself is flawed? What if we’ve been trying to build a rigid, brittle structure on unstable ground, when what we really need is a system designed not for immovability, but for resilience in a world of constant, unpredictable change?
The Flawed Blueprint: Why “Listen to Your Body” Isn’t Enough
The advice given to people with arthritis who want to lift weights is remarkably consistent, whether it comes from a doctor, a physical therapist, or a well-meaning fitness website.
It’s a collection of sensible-sounding rules: start with light weights, aim for 8 to 12 repetitions, perfect your form, and above all, listen to your body.5
This guidance is born from a good place—the desire to do no harm.
But for many of us, it’s a blueprint for failure.
The fundamental problem with this conventional wisdom is that it is static.
It provides a fixed set of rules for a condition that is, by its very nature, dynamic and unpredictable.
Arthritis doesn’t present as a steady, unchanging state.
It’s a condition of fluctuating pain, variable stiffness, and energy levels that can shift dramatically from one day to the next.3
A weight that feels manageable on Tuesday can feel impossible on Wednesday.
A workout that leaves you feeling energized one week can trigger a flare-up the next.
The standard blueprint has no mechanism to account for this daily variability.
It assumes a stable system when it is, in fact, dealing with a highly volatile one.
The Vicious Psycho-Physiological Cycle
This mismatch between a static plan and a dynamic reality creates a destructive feedback loop—a vicious cycle that grinds down both the body and the spirit.
It begins when a person, diligently following the rules, inadvertently overloads their system.
This overload might not even register during the workout itself.
It could be the result of a poor night’s sleep, a stressful day at work, or simply a minor misjudgment of that day’s capacity.
The result, as I experienced, is a delayed-onset flare-up.
This flare-up does more than just cause physical pain.
It delivers a powerful psychological blow.
It reinforces the deeply held fear that movement is dangerous and that the body is fragile.
This experience of pain-as-punishment validates the instinct to avoid activity, a phenomenon clinically recognized as a major barrier to exercise.10
This avoidance, however logical it feels, is the next link in the chain of decline.
Inactivity leads to a measurable loss of muscle mass, a process known as atrophy.
As the muscles surrounding the joints weaken, they become less effective at their primary job: acting as a biological support system or “brace”.8
Without this muscular support, the joints are subjected to greater stress and impact forces not just during exercise, but during everyday activities like climbing stairs or carrying groceries.
This increased joint stress leads, inevitably, to more pain.
And so the cycle is complete: Pain → Fear → Inactivity → Weakness → More Pain.17
The standard advice, by failing to account for the body’s daily fluctuations, inadvertently feeds this very cycle it is meant to break.
The true inadequacy of the conventional approach, however, lies in its failure to grasp a critical reality of chronic disease: the psychological component is not a mere side effect of the physical condition; it is a primary driver of its progression.
The rates of depression and anxiety among people with arthritis are staggering, estimated to be between two and ten times higher than in the general population.19
This is not simply a reaction to being in pain.
These psychological states actively worsen the physical condition.
Both anxiety and depression are known to lower a person’s pain threshold, creating a cruel feedback loop where pain intensifies negative emotions, and those negative emotions, in turn, amplify the perception of pain.20
The impact is not just subjective.
A landmark study sought to understand why people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have lower levels of cardiorespiratory fitness.
The researchers were able to quantify the contributing factors.
They found that while the disease process itself was directly responsible for 26% of the fitness gap, and physical symptoms like pain and stiffness accounted for 34%, the remaining 34% was due to negative emotions like depression and stress.22
This is a stunning finding: the psychological burden of the disease had an impact on physical capacity equal to that of the physical symptoms themselves.
Therefore, any training system that only addresses the physical variables—the sets, the reps, the weight on the bar—is fundamentally incomplete.
It is attacking only half of the problem.
The failure of the “standard advice” is not just that it is physically imprecise for a variable condition; it is that it is psychologically damaging.
By setting people up for a boom-and-bust cycle of progress and painful setbacks, it reinforces the very fear, anxiety, and loss of control that actively contribute to their physical decline.
A truly effective methodology must be engineered from the ground up to do the opposite: to systematically build confidence, restore a sense of agency, and provide the tools to navigate uncertainty with skill and composure.
The Seismic Shift: An Epiphany from Earthquake Engineering
My turning point didn’t come in a research lab or a physical therapy clinic.
It came late one night, slumped on my couch, absently watching a documentary about architectural innovation in Tokyo.
The program focused on how engineers design skyscrapers to survive in one of the most seismically active regions on the planet.
As the engineers described their philosophy, something clicked deep in my mind.
They weren’t trying to build rigid, immovable fortresses.
They knew that in the face of an earthquake’s immense power, rigidity equals fragility.
A structure that cannot bend will inevitably break.
Instead, their entire approach was based on resilience.
They designed their buildings to be dynamic—to flex, to sway, to absorb and dissipate the violent energy of a tremor, and to return to center, intact.
In that moment, I saw the flaw in my own thinking with blinding clarity.
The Central Analogy: Building for Resilience, Not Rigidity
The Old Model (The Brick House): For years, I had been treating my body—and advising others to treat theirs—like a simple brick house.
The goal was to make it “stronger” by adding more bricks (lifting heavier weights) and ensuring the mortar was perfect (using good form).
But a brick house, no matter how well-built, is fundamentally rigid.
When an unexpected tremor hits—a flare-up, a stressful week, a poor night’s sleep—the rigid structure can’t adapt.
The load is concentrated in one area, cracks form, and the entire system is compromised.
This was my cycle of failure.
The New Paradigm (The Modern Skyscraper): The documentary offered a new, powerful paradigm.
I needed to stop thinking like a bricklayer and start thinking like a seismic engineer.
I needed to view my body not as a static structure, but as a modern, earthquake-resistant skyscraper.
The integrity of such a building comes not from its refusal to move, but from a sophisticated, integrated system designed to adapt to unpredictable forces.
This mental model aligns perfectly with emerging biological concepts like “biotensegrity,” which posits that our bodies are not simple stacks of bones under compression.
Instead, our bones are like floating struts held in a dynamic, balanced web of tension created by our muscles and fascia.
In a tensegrity structure, a load applied to any single point is distributed throughout the entire network, preventing localized failure.23
This is the essence of resilience.
Introducing the Three Pillars of Seismic-Proofing Your Body
This epiphany gave me a new blueprint, one based on the core principles of seismic design.
I realized that building an “unbreakable” body with arthritis required a systematic approach, focusing on three distinct but interconnected pillars of engineering.
- Pillar I: The Resilient Foundation (Mastering Load & Capacity): Before a skyscraper can rise, engineers must meticulously prepare the ground and construct a foundation capable of supporting the structure through decades of stress. For us, this means understanding and managing the total “load” on our system over the long term to steadily build our capacity without causing a structural collapse.
- Pillar II: The Flexible Superstructure (Autoregulation for Daily Resilience): Modern skyscrapers are not rigid. They are equipped with incredible systems like base isolators and tuned mass dampers that allow the building to absorb and adapt to the daily reality of small and large tremors. For us, this means abandoning rigid workout plans and adopting a system of “autoregulation” that allows us to adjust our training in real-time based on our body’s daily signals.
- Pillar III: The Smart Materials & Blueprints (Intelligent Exercise Selection & Technique): An engineer chooses specific materials—steel, concrete, glass—and assembles them according to a precise blueprint to ensure the final structure is sound. For us, this means selecting the right exercises to reinforce our joint support systems, using impeccable technique, and, crucially, having a clear emergency action plan for when a “tremor” (a flare-up) inevitably occurs.
This three-pillar framework transformed my approach.
It replaced fear and uncertainty with a sense of purpose and control.
I was no longer a victim of my body’s whims; I was the chief engineer of my own resilience project.
Pillar I: The Resilient Foundation (Mastering Load & Capacity)
The first and most fundamental error in the “brick house” model of training is its focus on the single workout.
We tend to believe that a flare-up is caused by something we did today.
But a structural failure in a building is rarely the result of a single gust of wind; it’s the culmination of stresses accumulated over time.
Similarly, a flare-up is almost always an “overflow” event.
It happens when the total sum of stress on your system exceeds your body’s current capacity to adapt and recover.25
This total stress is what exercise scientists call “load.” Critically, this doesn’t just include the time you spend in the gym.
It encompasses every stressor your body has to manage: a poor night’s sleep, a demanding project at work, a family argument, inadequate nutrition, and the underlying inflammation from arthritis itself.26
Your body’s ability to handle this cumulative load is its “capacity.” When load exceeds capacity, the system breaks down.
This is the engineering principle behind a flare-up.
Our first job as our own body’s engineer, therefore, is to stop thinking about individual workouts and start managing our total workload over time.
We need a tool to measure the load we are applying and ensure we are building our foundation—our capacity—at a safe and sustainable rate.
That tool is called the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR).
The Engineer’s Tool: Understanding the ACWR
The ACWR is a concept from sports science used to predict and prevent injuries in elite athletes, but its principles are perfectly suited for managing a chronic condition like arthritis.25
It’s a simple ratio that compares your recent workload to your historical workload.
- Acute Load: This is the total workload you’ve done in the last 7 days. Think of this as the new stress you are applying to the structure.
- Chronic Load: This is the average of your weekly workload over the last 4 weeks. Think of this as your fitness, your capacity, or the stable foundation you have built over the past month.
- The Ratio (ACWR): You calculate it by dividing the Acute Load by the Chronic Load (ACWR=AcuteLoad÷ChronicLoad).
Research has shown that there is a “sweet spot” for this ratio.
An ACWR between 0.8 and 1.3 indicates that you are applying enough stress to stimulate positive adaptation (getting stronger) without dramatically increasing your risk of injury or overload.27
If the ratio drops below 0.8, you may be undertraining.
If it spikes above 1.5, you are in the danger zone.
A sudden spike like this means you’ve applied a load that your foundation is not yet prepared to handle, and your risk of a flare-up or injury skyrockets.25
A Practical Guide to Tracking Your Load
This might sound complicated, but tracking your load can be surprisingly simple.
You don’t need fancy equipment.
All you need is a way to assign a numerical value to each workout.
The easiest method is to multiply the duration of your session by its overall perceived difficulty.
Session Load = Duration (in minutes) x Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)
We will cover RPE in detail in the next section, but for now, just think of it as a simple 1-10 scale of how hard the workout felt.
Let’s walk through an example:
Week 1:
- Monday: 30 min workout, RPE 6 (Session Load = 180)
- Wednesday: 30 min workout, RPE 7 (Session Load = 210)
- Friday: 30 min workout, RPE 6 (Session Load = 180)
- Week 1 Acute Load = 180 + 210 + 180 = 570 units
Let’s say you maintain a similar workload for the next three weeks:
- Week 2 Acute Load = 580
- Week 3 Acute Load = 600
- Week 4 Acute Load = 590
Now, at the end of Week 4, we can calculate your foundation:
- Chronic Load = (570 + 580 + 600 + 590) / 4 = 585 units
This Chronic Load of 585 is your baseline capacity.
Now you can intelligently plan for Week 5.
To stay in the sweet spot, you want to aim for a gradual increase of no more than 10-15%.25
A safe target for your Week 5 Acute Load would be around 640 (a ~9% increase).
- Planned Week 5 Acute Load = 640
- Projected ACWR = 640 / 585 = 1.09
An ACWR of 1.09 is perfectly within the 0.8-1.3 sweet spot.
You can now structure your workouts for Week 5 to hit that target of 640 units, confident that you are building your foundation, not setting it up for collapse.
This systematic approach fundamentally changes your relationship with your condition.
The vague, often anxiety-inducing advice to “progress slowly” is replaced by a concrete, data-driven strategy.
The standard approach is reactive: you experience pain, so you stop moving, often without understanding why the pain occurred.9
This breeds uncertainty and fear.
The ACWR framework, by contrast, is proactive and diagnostic.
If you do experience a setback, you can look back at your log and identify the workload spike that likely caused it.
The cause is no longer a terrifying mystery; it’s a data point you can learn from.
This process of demystification is profoundly empowering.
It directly counteracts the feelings of helplessness and lack of control that are known to fuel the negative psychological spiral associated with arthritis.19
Pain is transformed from a random, malicious event into understandable feedback from the system.
You shift from being a reactive victim of your symptoms to the proactive chief engineer of your body’s capacity.
This is the first, and most critical, step in building a truly resilient foundation.
Pillar II: The Flexible Superstructure (Autoregulation for Daily Resilience)
Building a solid foundation with intelligent load management is essential, but it’s only half the battle.
A skyscraper in Tokyo must do more than just sit on stable ground; it must be able to withstand the daily reality of tremors.
The ground beneath it is constantly shifting.
To survive, the building itself must be flexible.
Engineers achieve this with incredible technologies like base isolation systems—massive bearings that allow the entire skyscraper to move independently of the ground’s violent shaking—and tuned mass dampers, giant pendulums that swing in opposition to the building’s sway to cancel out dangerous vibrations.
This is the function of our second pillar: Autoregulation.
It is the system that allows our “superstructure”—our body—to adapt to the daily “tremors” of life with arthritis.
Our readiness to train is not a fixed constant.
It is a dynamic variable, influenced every single day by our pain levels, morning stiffness, sleep quality, and life stress.29
A rigid, pre-written workout plan (“Today I will squat 3 sets of 10 at 100 lbs”) completely ignores this reality.
It is the equivalent of welding a skyscraper directly to its foundation and hoping for the best.
This rigidity is precisely what causes the “boom-and-bust” cycle of injury and flare-U.S. Autoregulation is the flexible coupling that disconnects our training plan from these unpredictable daily shifts.
Your Internal Seismometers: RPE and RIR
To autoregulate effectively, we need a way to measure our body’s state in real-time.
We need internal seismometers.
Fortunately, we have two incredibly simple and effective tools at our disposal: Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Reps in Reserve (RIR).31
These tools shift the goal of a workout.
Instead of chasing an external number (the weight on the bar or the number of reps), the goal becomes hitting an internal level of effort.
- Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE): This is a scale from 1 to 10 that measures how hard an exercise feels. A 1 is effortless, like picking up a pencil. A 10 is an absolute maximal effort, where you could not have possibly done another repetition.
- Reps in Reserve (RIR): This is a more concrete way of thinking about RPE. It asks a simple question: “How many more good-form repetitions could I have done before failure?” An RPE of 9 means you had 1 rep in reserve (RIR 1). An RPE of 8 means you had 2 reps in reserve (RIR 2), and so on.
For building strength safely with arthritis, the vast majority of your work should be done in the RPE 7-8 range (which corresponds to an RIR of 2-3).
This intensity is high enough to stimulate muscle growth and strength adaptation but leaves a critical buffer zone to prevent excessive muscular and neurological fatigue, which can trigger a flare-up.
The magic of this system is that it inherently adjusts for your good days and your bad days.
Imagine your plan calls for squats at an RPE of 8.
- On a good day: You feel strong, your joints are quiet. Hitting an RPE of 8 might mean squatting 100 lbs.
- On a bad day: You slept poorly, and your knees are stiff and achy. To hit that same internal effort level of RPE 8, you might only need to use 80 lbs.
In the old, rigid model, trying to force 100 lbs on a bad day would be a recipe for disaster.
But in the autoregulated model, both workouts are equally successful.
You achieved the desired training stimulus for that day, perfectly matched to your body’s current capacity.
You stayed within the structural limits of the system, worked productively, and reinforced the habit of training without causing damage.30
The Autoregulation Dashboard
To make this practical, you can use a simple dashboard to guide your decisions in the gym.
This table replaces the vague command to “listen to your body” with a systematic, repeatable process.
The core challenge for someone with arthritis during a workout is uncertainty: “Is this pain okay? Should I push through? Am I just being lazy?” This dashboard removes that ambiguity by linking a specific number to a subjective feeling and a clear training purpose.
It empowers you to make confident, data-driven decisions in the moment, which is a powerful tool for building the self-efficacy needed for long-term success.
| RPE Score | Reps in Reserve (RIR) | How It Feels | Application in Your Arthritis Training Plan |
| 1-2 | 8+ | Effortless, could do all day. | Warm-up & Cool-down: Gentle movements to prepare the body and aid recovery. |
| 3-4 | 6-7 | Very light effort, like a brisk walk. | Active Recovery: On rest days or during a significant flare-up to promote blood flow. |
| 5-6 | 4-5 | Moderate effort. Breathing is deeper. | Technique Work / Deload: Perfecting form on new exercises or during a planned recovery week. |
| 7-8 | 2-3 | Challenging. The last few reps require focus and effort. | PRIMARY STRENGTH ZONE: The target for most of your working sets to build strength safely. |
| 9 | 1 | Very Hard. You had only one more good rep left in you. | Use Sparingly: Can be used for the last set of an exercise on a very good day. High fatigue cost. |
| 10 | 0 | Maximal Effort. Absolute failure; no more reps possible. | AVOID: The risk of form breakdown and systemic overload is too high. This is the “red line” you do not cross. |
This dashboard is your flexible superstructure.
It allows you to absorb the daily tremors of arthritis, ensuring that every training session is a productive step forward in building a more resilient and trustworthy body.
Pillar III: The Smart Materials & Blueprints (Intelligent Exercise Selection & Technique)
With a solid foundation and a flexible superstructure in place, the final pillar of our seismic-proof body is the selection of the right materials and the adherence to a precise blueprint for construction.
An engineer wouldn’t build a skyscraper out of mud bricks, and they wouldn’t assemble steel beams haphazardly.
In the same way, we must be intelligent about the exercises we choose and the technique we use to perform them.
Building Your Armor: The Right Exercises
The primary goal of our exercise selection is not just to build bigger muscles, but to build functional armor.
We are strategically strengthening the specific muscles that support and protect our most vulnerable joints, effectively creating a biological brace that offloads stress from the joint itself.4
While a balanced, full-body program is important, we must place special emphasis on reinforcing three critical support systems.
- Hips & Glutes (The Knee & Low Back Protectors): The gluteal muscles are the powerhouse of the lower body. When they are strong, they control the movement of the femur (thigh bone), preventing the knee from collapsing inward during activities like squatting, lunging, and climbing stairs—a common cause of knee pain. They also provide stability for the pelvis, which helps protect the lower back.
- Key Exercises: Glute Bridges, Clamshells, Banded Lateral Walks, Kettlebell or Dumbbell Deadlifts.17
- Core (The Spinal Stabilizer): The “core” refers to the entire complex of muscles that wrap around your torso. A strong, stable core acts like a natural weightlifting belt, protecting the spine from excessive shear and compressive forces.
- Key Exercises: Planks (and variations), Pallof Press, Birddog Rows, Dead Bugs.35
- Upper Back (The Shoulder & Neck Support): The muscles of the upper back (rhomboids, trapezius, rear deltoids) are responsible for posture and scapular control. Strengthening them helps to pull the shoulders back and down, creating a more stable platform for the shoulder joint and reducing strain on the neck.
- Key Exercises: Dumbbell or Banded Rows, Facepulls, Band Pull-Aparts.35
The Blueprints: Technique and Modifications
How you perform an exercise is just as important as which exercise you choose.
Our blueprint for movement must prioritize joint health above all else.
- Slow and Controlled Tempo: Avoid fast, jerky movements. Using momentum is a way to cheat the muscle and transfer stress directly to the joint. A deliberate tempo, such as counting four seconds on the way down and four seconds on the way up, maximizes muscle engagement and minimizes joint strain.6
- Never Lock Your Joints: At the top of a movement like a leg press or a shoulder press, always maintain a slight bend in your knees or elbows. “Locking out” the joint shifts the load from the muscle to the joint capsule and ligaments, which is precisely what we want to avoid.6
- Embrace Smart Substitutions: There is no single “best” exercise. The best exercise is the one you can perform productively and pain-free. If gripping a heavy dumbbell causes pain in your hands or wrists, switch to resistance bands with handles, or use adjustable weights that strap onto your wrists or ankles.33 If a barbell squat feels unstable or painful, use a leg press machine or a goblet squat, which can be easier to control.33
The Flare-Up Protocol: Your Emergency Action Plan
Even with the best engineering, tremors happen.
The measure of a resilient system is not whether it can avoid all stress, but how it responds when stress occurs.
This is why every skyscraper has an emergency action plan, and so should you.
When a flare-up happens, the old blueprint tells you to stop everything and rest.
Our new blueprint commands us to Pivot, Don’t Panic.
Complete rest is often counterproductive.
It accelerates muscle loss and reinforces the fear of movement.
Instead, we adopt a strategic, modified approach to maintain consistency and control.
The ability to train productively and safely during a flare-up is not an inherent talent; it is a learnable skill.
This protocol is the curriculum for learning that skill.
Successfully navigating a flare transforms a moment of crisis into a moment of empowerment, fundamentally rewiring your relationship with your condition.
Your Three-Step Flare-Up Protocol:
- Switch to Isometrics for the Affected Joint: If your knee is inflamed, standard squats are off the table. Instead, perform isometric exercises like wall sits. An isometric contraction is one where the muscle tenses but does not change length, meaning there is no movement at the joint. This allows you to continue strengthening the supporting muscles (like the quadriceps) and maintaining the neural connection to them without irritating the inflamed joint.4
- Focus on Gentle, Pain-Free Range of Motion: The adage “motion is lotion” is true. Gentle, non-weight-bearing movements through a pain-free range of motion help to lubricate the joint with synovial fluid and can reduce stiffness and pain.8 For a flared knee, this could mean sitting on a chair and slowly straightening and bending the leg.
- Train Around the Problem: A knee flare-up is the perfect opportunity to have a fantastic upper body and core workout. If your shoulder is bothering you, dedicate your session to lower body strength. By focusing on what you can do instead of what you can’t, you maintain the psychological momentum of your training routine, prevent a total halt in progress, and avoid the deconditioning that comes with complete inactivity.9
Conclusion: Becoming the Architect of Your Resilience
I still have bad days.
Arthritis is a chronic condition, and no amount of brilliant engineering can change that fundamental fact.
The difference is that now, a “bad day” is no longer a catastrophe.
It’s just a data point.
A few weeks ago, I woke up with the familiar, ominous ache in my left knee.
In the past, this would have been a signal for immediate retreat.
I would have canceled my workout, surrendered to the couch, and braced for the downward spiral of pain and frustration.
But that day, I consulted my new blueprint.
I went to the gym.
I started my warm-up and used the Autoregulation Dashboard to assess my body’s state.
I knew my planned squat workout was too ambitious.
Instead of giving up, I pivoted.
I reduced the weight on the bar by 20% from my previous session.
I focused intently on a slow, controlled tempo.
My goal was no longer to lift a specific weight, but to achieve an RPE of 7—a challenging, productive effort that left two good reps in the tank.
I finished my sets.
I felt strong.
I felt in control.
The workout didn’t break me; it reinforced me.
That, for me, is the ultimate victory.
This journey has taught me that we have been sold a flawed vision of strength.
We’ve been taught to think in terms of rigidity, of being an immovable object.
But for those of us living with the daily tremors of arthritis, that is a blueprint for collapse.
The true path to an unbreakable body lies in embracing a different model—one of resilience, flexibility, and intelligent adaptation.
The goal is not to become a brittle brick house, but a dynamic, modern skyscraper.
By acting as the chief engineer of your own body—by mastering your foundation through load management, building a flexible superstructure with autoregulation, and using smart materials and blueprints in your exercise selection—you can reclaim your strength.
You can build a body that doesn’t just withstand the tremors of arthritis, but is designed to thrive in spite of them.
Arthritis is a part of your story, but it does not have to be the architect of your future.
You are.
Works cited
- Donna’s Arthritis Pain Success Story – Vintage Fitness, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.vintagefitness.ca/blog/2023/10/20/donnas-arthritis-pain-success-story
- How Larry Beat Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Got Strong as Hell | Nerd …, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/how-larry-beat-rheumatoid-arthritis-and-got-strong-as-hell/
- Weight Lifting with RA – Versus Arthritis, accessed July 30, 2025, https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/53844/weight-lifting-with-ra
- Exercise and Strength Training With Arthritis, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/physical-activity/getting-started/exercise-and-strength-training-with-arthritis
- Weightlifting Safety for Healthy Joints – Alliance Orthopedics, accessed July 30, 2025, https://allianceortho.com/weightlifting-safety-for-healthy-joints/
- Weight Training for Beginners – Arthritis Foundation, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/physical-activity/getting-started/weight-training-101
- You Can Still Lift Weights if You Have Arthritis, accessed July 30, 2025, https://mvhsc.com/news/you-can-still-lift-weights-if-you-have-arthritis
- Exercising with arthritis: Improve your joint pain and stiffness – Mayo Clinic, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/arthritis/in-depth/arthritis/art-20047971
- Working Out Through Pain – Arthritis Foundation, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/physical-activity/success-strategies/working-out-through-pain
- Osteoarthritis & the fear of movement – Onform Physio + Pilates in Auckland, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.onformphysio.co.nz/blog/osteoarthritis-the-fear-of-movement/
- Approach-Avoidance Tendencies Influence the Relationship …, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.23.25321044v1.full-text
- Osteoarthritis and fear – MedCrave online, accessed July 30, 2025, https://medcraveonline.com/MOJGG/osteoarthritis-and-fear.html
- How to Exercise with Arthritis?, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritisfoundationasia.com/how-to-exercise-with-arthritis.html
- Top 11 Workout Mistakes to Avoid – Arthritis Foundation, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/physical-activity/getting-started/top-11-workout-mistakes-to-avoid
- Rheumatoid Arthritis: Top Tips for Effective Strength Training – Everyday Health, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.everydayhealth.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/treatment/ra-make-strength-training-easier/
- Lucy says managing her arthritis is all about “striking a balance”, accessed July 30, 2025, https://versusarthritis.org/news/2021/october/lucy-says-managing-her-arthritis-is-all-about-striking-a-balance/
- Building Strength to Help Manage Arthritis Long Term – Central Ohio Spine and Joint, accessed July 30, 2025, https://cospineandjoint.com/strength-training-for-arthritis/
- Muscle strength and balance are important for healthy joints | University of Iowa Health Care, accessed July 30, 2025, https://uihc.org/health-topics/muscle-strength-and-balance-are-important-healthy-joints
- Exploring the Connection Between Mental Health and Arthritis, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org.au/arthritis/arthritis-insights/living-well-with-arthritis/exploring-the-connection-between-mental-health-and-arthritis/
- Arthritis and Mental Health – Arthritis Foundation, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/emotional-well-being/anxiety-depression/arthritis-and-mental-health
- Feelings matter: Emotional wellbeing and arthritis information booklet – NHS TIMS, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.tims.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/emotional-wellbeing-and-arthritis-booklet.pdf
- Psychological — Not Just Physical — Symptoms Hamper Physical Fitness in Patients with RA – Managed Healthcare Executive, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/psychological-not-just-physical-symptoms-hamper-physical-fitness-in-patients-with-ra
- Tension and Integrity – Tensegrity a Balance of Tension Members, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.anatomytrains.com/fascia/tensegrity/
- Bones of Tensegrity – intension designs, accessed July 30, 2025, http://intensiondesigns.ca/bones-of-tensegrity/
- The Role of Load Management in Rehabilitation – Absolute Balance, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.absolutebalance.com.au/the-role-of-load-management-in-rehabilitation
- The Bucket Analogy: How we can understand and prevent injuries – Pittwater Chiro, accessed July 30, 2025, https://pittwaterchiro.com/bucket-analogy/
- Load Management – Physiopedia, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.physio-pedia.com/Load_Management
- Stress and arthritis: Why it’s important to manage your stress levels, accessed July 30, 2025, https://versusarthritis.org/news/2024/january/stress-and-arthritis-why-it-s-important-to-manage-your-stress-levels/
- Autoregulation in Exercise: Listening to Your Body Scientifically, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.alliedmovement.com.au/post/autoregulation-in-exercise-listening-to-your-body-scientifically
- Benefits of Autoregulation: Adjust Workouts to Your Readiness – Train Fitness, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.trainfitness.ai/blog/7c3a44c3-4e15-4739-a726-f1c167ac9641
- Autoregulation & Injury Risk Reduction in Strength Training – Gnarly …, accessed July 30, 2025, https://gognarly.com/blogs/clinics/autoregulation-injury-risk-reduction-in-strength-training
- Lesson 6: Autoregulation and Periodization for Resistance Training Progression, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.healthierwithscience.com/general-exercise-course/lesson-6-autoregulation-and-periodization-for-resistance-training-progression/
- To Lift or Not to Lift: Addressing Arthritis Myths – Health & Fitness …, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.healthandfitness.org/improve-your-club/to-lift-or-not-to-lift-addressing-arthritis-myths/
- 8 Ways Exercise Helps Your Joints – Arthritis Foundation, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/physical-activity/getting-started/8-ways-exercise-helps-joints
- Weight Lifting With Arthritis: 15 Exercises To Build Strength Without Stressing Your Joints, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.solvingpainwithstrength.com/blog/weight-lifting-with-arthritis-15-exercises-to-build-strength-without-stressing-your-joints
- Must Know Tips for Weight Training with Arthritis Hands – Cathe Friedrich, accessed July 30, 2025, https://cathe.com/must-know-tips-for-weight-training-with-arthritis-hands/
- Rheumatoid Arthritis and Strength Training – WebMD, accessed July 30, 2025, https://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/features/strength-exercises-for-ra
