Exercise-Induced Pain

The saying “No pain, no gain” is absolutely wrong!

Most fitness experts will agree that exercise should be free of serious discomfort. Pain from physical activity usually means you’re doing it incorrectly somehow. If you continue to exercise that way, you might actually cause some physical damage.

We need to learn to distinguish between physical injury and routine mild discomfort from overdoing the activity a little. Sure, you’re going to be a little sore if you run an extra mile or pile on the reps at the weight machine. But how much discomfort is an indicator of a health problem?

Here are some ways to tell:

• Learn to monitor your body and read its messages. Compare what you are feeling now with what you have felt in the past. Is this pain something you’ve felt before? What was the outcome of this feeling?
• Any new pain, even if it is mild, is a warning sign. Stop exercising and figure out what is causing it.
• Take seriously a pain that is sharper than anything you’ve felt before or that appears suddenly in a part of the body where you’ve never had pain before. These types of new pain may indicate either an acute injury or a problem with chronic overuse. One example is Achilles tendinitis. That causes pain around the ankle that comes and goes. If you ignore it, it may progress to a torn tendon.
• Muscle soreness pain that you don’t feel until the next day is pretty common, and is due to overuse. If you touch or squeeze the achy muscle, it is tight and sensitive. To help the muscle heal, keep it moving. Stretch the muscle before exercising and massage it afterwards. This helps remove lactic acid which is produced when muscles are used. It’s the lactic acid that is causing overuse pain.
• You can fix overuse pain yourself, but if the pain lasts more than 48 hours or is so bad it’s incapacitating, seek medical attention.

Here’s to pain-free physical activity.