Return to Exercise and Sport Safely Without Making Your Pain Worse

Getting back into exercise and sports after a break or injury can feel challenging, especially when pain is involved. The good news is that with the right approach, you can return to physical activity safely and reduce the risk of aggravating pain. This guide will walk you through practical steps to help you regain strength, confidence, and enjoyment in movement without setbacks.

Understand Your Pain and Its Limits

I can't overstate the importance of being hyper self-aware when it comes to when and how pain is triggered. These give you clear clues as to movements, positions, and circumstances that make your pain worse.

For example, with knee pain, you may tolerate deadlifts and glute bridges well but not squats and lunges, even if you try to modify. Or you may notice that your knee only hurts going down stairs when your sleep drops below six hours. You know then what to focus on.

Pain can signal injury or simply muscle soreness from inactivity. Differentiating between these helps clarify your understanding further.

• Track your pain: Keep a journal noting when pain occurs, its intensity, and what activities trigger it.

• Identify safe pain levels: Discomfort is normal; sharp pain that gets worse the more you do is not.

I generally tell my clients that if doing something keeps their pain levels the same or improves them, you've got the green light If you notice your pain getting worse the more you do it, back off and modify.

Avoiding setbacks

A client returning to bench pressing after a shoulder injury tries to go back to the weight he was doing before too soon. He re-aggravates his shoulder. No matter how well he was doing with his rehab, stretching, and other modalities, it doesn't matter if you go beyond the capacity of your healing tissue.

This is why I stress this as the most important step in rehabbing any injury or returning to any sport. Avoid what irritates your issue further. If you find yourself feeling better, returning full tilt to your sport, only to regress and have to take time off again, you're not being patient enough nor gradually ramping yourself up as needed.

Start Slowly and Progress Gradually and Safely

Follow the rule of "too's". Don't do too much too fast after doing too little for too long. You need an on-ramp and strategy to go from rest or inactivity back to higher-intensity activities.

• Start overly conservative.

• Use less load, range of motion, and a slower tempo with movements and progress to heavier, larger, and faster movements over time.

• Focus on movements that do not cause pain or discomfort and modify the above variables as needed to achieve this.

  
  

For example, I had a runner coming off of IT band syndrome start with incline walks on a treadmill. We progressed to a literal 5-minute run to gauge preparedness and then eventually to her usual 5-10k runs.

Celebrate Progress (even if you don't think it's progress)

Complete pain relief is not your only sign of progress. It can discourage people early on if they don't see immediate symptom relief, but some important wins include:

• Getting stronger

• Having less frequent pain

• Being able to do more with the same level of pain

• Increasing your mobility

• Not thinking about your pain as much

• Understanding your body better (when to push, when to back off)

• You don't stress about your pain as much

  
  

All of these can happen with pain still being present. If you're experiencing any of these, it's a sign you're on the right track.

To your good health,

Coach Stephen

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Thanks for reading.

P.S.

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