I have seen lots of people who come to me with problems such as these and one common problem I have seen is that most of the professionals people have been to only look at and treat the symptom(s). Well guess what, unless you find the CAUSE of the symptom and remove it, the symptomatic relief will be only temporary until the cause brings it right back. For example, if someone has knee problems, more often than not the real issue will be somewhere in a joint above or below the knee, which would be in the hips or in the ankles. Unless this real issue is taken care of, the knee issues will continue to come back.
In Low Back Disorders, Stuart McGill states the following: "Reducing pain and improving function for patients with low back pain involves two components:
*Removing the stressors that create or exacerbate damage
*Enhancing activities that build healthy supportive tissues"
Take a good look at that first point. Without getting rid of the cause, or stressors, the symptoms will never go away for good. The cause may be a mobility issue somewhere; it could be a weakness or imbalance somewhere; it might just be a certain activity or movement that causes problems. Whatever it may be, the cause must be found and eliminated if the symptoms are to fully be rid of. You can get cortisone shots 24/7 but unless you take care of the real culprit, you will never be better.
Crossing over to another spectrum, the same type of idea goes for plateaued lifts in the weight room or performance on the field. Unless you identify the weakness that is halting progress and fix it, you will be on a long road to nowhere. For example, if your squat is stuck and you keep squatting away week in and week out, you will go nowhere. Maybe you need to fix something with your technique, maybe you have weak glutes that need to be strengthened, maybe you have rotation in your hips you don't know about, or maybe your program just plain sucks; whatever it may be, you need to find the limiting factor and take care of it.
Whether you are talking about issues with pain and injury, or performance, it is absolutely imperative that you find the CAUSE of your problems and eliminate it. If you don't do this, you are just spittin in the wind, my friend.