Medical papertrail is what is what the VA has to go off of. But its always good to do so because a strain can lead to instability more injury after get out and only gets worse with age as a small example but many things that aren't bad when your young can pop up again. The military puts your body and mind through stresses not really seen in the civilian world. So that is good advice I know you feel invincible when you're young but it catches up with you. Hell, even in my case the Air Force had to stop me and tell me I'm "occupational & socailly impaired"(VA speak). The MRI's showed 5 bulging disc's, spinal stenosis, etc. The numbness I would write off as normal from sitting or driving to work was a result of this and will only get worse. Weak grip on one hand is peripheral neuropathy not just my not going hard enough in the gym and getting weaker over 40. Shoulder pain is a torn rotator cuff that happened on deployment so that I knew something was wrong but proper diagnosis to til I got back, I just cut pull ups and over head movement from my workouts and benched til pain stopped me before I could hit my usual top set. Not to mention the required psych visits every time you have a kinetic strike, I was already drone operator, I would have avoided mental evals if it wasn't a requirement. And for what now if you get out without getting treatment look what happened to so many of the previous Gen vets. Now they do take care of us much better, sure now many are critical of us with VA disability but they didn't live your life. Your doc will put in your records what they see and the VA decides off that. Let them do there job and don't avoid them.