Align Pain & Performance

WE’RE HIRING AT ALIGN! 📣

We’re growing our team in Redding and hiring for two distinct roles.

1️⃣ JOINT PAIN PERSONAL TRAINER
Align is looking for a personal trainer who wants to do more than lead workouts.

Our coaches work one-on-one with people dealing with persistent joint pain, helping them rebuild capacity, restore strength, and return to the activities that matter to them.

We’re looking for someone who is thoughtful, curious, comfortable working with people, and serious about becoming an excellent coach. You should care about the details, communicate well, and be excited to keep learning.

This is a coaching role for someone who wants to develop real expertise in the intersection of pain, movement, and strength.

Redding, CA | Interested in joining Align? Email [email protected]

2️⃣ COACHING FLOOR ASSISTANT
Want to learn what great coaching looks like from the inside?

Align is hiring a part-time Coaching Floor Assistant to support our coaches and clients while helping keep the gym organized, clean, functional, and welcoming.
This is a part-time, entry-level role supporting our coaches and clients on the gym floor.

You’ll assist during sessions, help clients with exercises under a coach’s guidance, and help keep the space organized, clean, functional, and welcoming.

It’s an especially good fit for someone interested in becoming a personal trainer, physical therapist, or gym owner who wants hands-on experience in a coaching-focused environment.

Part-time · Monday–Thursday mornings (7-11 or 8-12am) and/or afternoons (2-6pm)

Redding, CA | Interested in joining Align? Email [email protected]

WE’RE HIRING AT ALIGN! 📣

We’re growing our team in Redding and hiring for two distinct roles.

1. JOINT PAIN PERSONAL TRAINER
Align is looking for a personal trainer who wants to do more than lead workouts.
Our coaches work one-on-one with people dealing with persistent joint pain, helping them rebuild capacity, restore strength, and return to the activities that matter to them.

We’re looking for someone who is thoughtful, curious, comfortable working with people, and serious about becoming an excellent coach. You should care about the details, communicate well, and be excited to keep learning.
This is a coaching role for someone who wants to develop real expertise in the intersection of pain, movement, and strength.

Redding, CA | Interested in joining Align? Email [email protected]

2. COACHING FLOOR ASSISTANT
Want to learn what great coaching looks like from the inside?

Align is hiring a part-time Coaching Floor Assistant to support our coaches and clients while helping keep the gym organized, clean, functional, and welcoming.
This is a part-time, entry-level role supporting our coaches and clients on the gym floor. You’ll assist during sessions, help clients with exercises under a coach’s guidance, and help keep the space organized, clean, functional, and welcoming.
It’s an especially good fit for someone interested in becoming a personal trainer, physical therapist, or gym owner who wants hands-on experience in a coaching-focused environment.
Part-time | Monday–Thursday mornings (7-11 or 8-12am) and/or afternoons (2-6pm)

Redding, CA | Interested in joining Align? Email [email protected]

Our 65-year-old client from Case Study 01 had three years of low back pain and a stack of treatment behind her — cortisone injections, physical therapy, chiropractic. Every one of them aimed at the spot that hurt. None of them worked.
Here’s why: her back wasn’t the cause. It was the symptom.

When someone finally assessed how she actually moved, five findings turned up — none of which lived in her low back:
Loss of hip mobility. A rotated pelvis. Glutes not doing their job. Hip flexors not doing their job. Deep core and spinal stabilizers offline.

On their own, not one of these is dramatic. Together, they left one area — her low back — absorbing the load the muscles around it should have been sharing. For three years.

And here’s the part that matters: none of it showed up until someone looked. These contributors don’t live in the painful area.

They show up in how the whole body moves and distributes load — which takes a proper movement assessment. She’d never had one. Everyone had treated the pain; no one had found the causes.
That’s the principle underneath all of our work. Persistent pain is never one thing.

It’s a list of contributors, each too small on its own to be “the cause” — which is exactly why single-fix treatment keeps missing it. Miss the list, and you can spend years treating the symptom.

Addressed one at a time, in order — restore the mobility, rebuild the stability, add strength — each contributing driver was cleared. Her pain went from 7 out of 10 to 0.

Read the full case study: experiencealign.com/joint-pain-blog/case-study-01-three-years-of-persistent-right-sided-low-back-pain

If your back pain is worst in the morning, this is for you.

Our 65-year-old client from Case Study 01 lived it: starting pain 7 out of 10, worst in the mornings. For three years, the first three hours of every day were her hardest — stiff, guarded, slow to loosen. By afternoon it eased, and every morning it was back.

Here’s what most people never get told: a single back problem is really several problems, and they get fixed on different timelines.

First, the nervous system was retrained. It restored function to the muscles that stabilize the SI joint, so load moved away from her painful area. That alone brought her pain from 7 out of 10 to a 4 — real problems, solved fast. Don’t let anyone tell you that part doesn’t count.

The mornings were a different problem. Morning stiffness — worst before you’ve moved — is the signature of muscle and connective tissue. And those don’t respond to retraining; they rebuild through intelligent loading and blood supply to the tissue. Muscle is well supplied, so it comes along faster. Connective tissue gets the least blood, so it finishes last.

That’s why her recovery came in order. The nervous-system work left her days pain free. The morning pain that remained was connective tissue, still rebuilding on its slower clock — so the mornings were the last thing to clear.

This is exactly where people get confused and frustrated. Days better, mornings still rough, so it feels like it’s not working. It is. The slower tissue is simply on the timeline its blood supply sets.

By week 23, her pain was 0 out of 10 — the whole day, first hours included.

Read the full case study: experiencealign.com/joint-pain-blog/case-study-01-three-years-of-persistent-right-sided-low-back-pain

She was 65. She had three years of persistent low back pain. Average pain 7 out of 10, with mornings worse — the first three hours of every day were miserable. No injury; the pain just came on gradually and stayed. Walking, sitting, bending, stairs — all of it hurt.

She’d done what you’re supposed to do. Cortisone injections. Physical therapy. Chiropractic. Her MRI showed the normal age-related changes you’d find in plenty of pain-free 65-year-olds — nothing that explained three years of 7 out of 10 pain.

Every road ended the same place.
What assessment found wasn’t one problem. It was a stack: loss of hip mobility, a rotated pelvis, glutes not doing their job, hip flexors not doing their job, deep core and spinal stabilizers not doing their job. No single one of them was dramatic. Together, they were three years of pain.

So the work was done in order.

Weeks 1–3, mobility: restore hip and lumbar range, release the muscles that had been compensating, correct the pelvic rotation. Pain: 7 out of 10 down to 3 out of 10.

Weeks 4–11, stability: small work, done precisely — outer thigh raises, inner thigh raises, front leg raises, clamshells, hip bridges, deep core holds. Eight weeks of retraining the muscles that had stopped doing their jobs, until the joints they protect were stable again. Pain: 1–2 out of 10 through the day, still higher in the mornings.

Weeks 12–23, strength: progressive loading — squats, deadlifts, step-ups — building capacity week by week. Final numbers: an 80 lb deadlift, 40 lb squats, two-minute planks, two-minute back extensions.

Pain at week 23: 0 out of 10. Mornings included. No injections. No surgery.

She’s back to long walks, gardening, and her grandkids’ games — which was the goal the entire time.

The lesson isn’t that back pain resolves in 23 weeks. It’s that persistent pain is rarely one thing — it’s a list. Hers just needed to be found, and worked, in order.

Read the full case study: experiencealign.com/joint-pain-blog/case-study-01-three-years-of-persistent-right-sided-low-back-pain