Suck it up or stop: When to train through pain
Are you currently experiencing pain or an annoying “niggle” that won’t go away?
Are you currently injured and feeling frustrated about having to COMPLETELY put a pause on training?
We get it. It sucks!
Being an active person myself, who grew up playing sports, I can testify to having this frustration on numerous occasions. And I can understand wanting to just train through the pain at times.
But there is a better way! In almost all circumstances, an injury doesn’t mean we need to push the pause button on our training.
When we take the “stop everything approach” despite settling pain in the short term, this can lead to roadblocks later on. When we take complete rest we end up weaker and worse off than we were pre-injury, not just in the “injured” area but when we “stop everything” it really is everything, even the body parts that are uninjured.
Let me set the scene, say you’re sprinting and suddenly experience a Grade 1 Hamstring Strain.. OUCH!
You’re told by your Physiotherapist to avoid running, training and any “high load” hamstring exercises in the Gym until suitable healing has occurred; in addition they may have prescribed pain management strategies to assist with the tissue healing at the injured site. But what about the rest of the body??
So, what’s the solution?
Relative Rest
“Relative Rest” involves putting a pause on only the provocative elements of training. This means anything that causes a high amount of pain or has a negative impact on tissue healing we can modify or remove, while continuing to exercise the rest of your body.
Think of your body as a powerful 16 wheeler truck. Just because you get one flat tyre, the whole truck doesn’t have to stop, all other 15 wheels can keep doing their job.
That’s why you see burnt up tyre on the side of the road, but no truck stopped there.
The same goes for your body when you have an injury. Yes we need to respect tissue healing in the injured area and do specific things to address that problem.
At the same time though, you can be maintaining or improving all the other parts of your body required for your sport or activity.
Instead of doing your hamstring and coming back a weaker and more fragile person when you return to activity, you come back with a Hamstring that isn’t holding you back, and the remainder of your body being even stronger than before.
Not only do you rehab your injury, you address the contributing factors AND keep everything else strong & powerful so when it’s time to return to sport or activities you’re better than before!
In addition, it allows us to address the underlying cause of the flat tyre in the time that will eventually be training time again once you’re healthy.
Rehab can be a blessing in disguise! It allows us to build strong and robust athletes and individuals.
So how do I know when to suck it up or pause? And what to put a pause to?
Once we’re clear that we know exactly what is contributing to your pain/problem and have a plan in place. We use a traffic light pain scale that ranks pain from 0 (No Pain at All) to 10 (The Worst Pain ever) and helps you understand when to continue, modify or stop the exercise altogether.
You can use this any time you’re dealing with some type of pain or injury.
It is important to recognise that not all pain requires us to stop what we’re doing, and sometimes it’s safe to acknowledge it but get on with it.
Here are some tips below!
- Don’t work above the pain of 4/10
- Swap your exercises instead of stopping them when above a 4/10 pain
- Seek help from a practitioner who treats using the relative rest approach and keeps you involved in as much training as possible. I know that is music to my ears too.
- Don’t push through extreme levels of pain
I’d like to leave you with two thoughts:
“Pain is our friend when we know how to use it”
“Just because we have a ‘flat tyre’ doesn’t mean we have to stop the whole truck”
