“No Pain, No Gain”. We have heard that term thrown around the gym, physical therapy clinics, and life in general. While I firmly believe that anything in life worth doing should be a challenge, it is not normal to have pain with exercise. Let me repeat that, it is NOT NORMAL to have pain with movement and exercise. Our goal should be to train, move, and perform the activities we love for a lifetime…not beat our bodies into submission, and burn out in our 40s. Here are a few tips to help you achieve pain free performance:
Work the muscles you can’t see in the mirror
It seems like since the dawn of Nautilus equipment and health clubs, we have been programmed to press and curl until we can’t lift our arms overhead. Walk into most gyms and you will see a slue of bench presses at various angles and gym rats curling in the squat rack, but it is a scavenger hunt to find a row machine or lat pulldown. When it comes to shoulder health, we should be doing the very opposite. We should be performing 3x as many repetitions with our pulling exercises. Rows, Face Pulls, Rear Flys, and Pull Ups/Pull Downs should be a staple in every program. The same concept applies for the lower body. Even though most of us hate it, we all know how to Squat and Lunge, but the Hinge Pattern is often neglected and, when performed, butchered. If you want healthy shoulders, low backs, and knees, it is time to rethink your training, and attack the muscles you can’t see in the mirror.
Don’t skip the Warm-up!
I get it. Most of us are on a time crunch, and fitting in exercise is hard enough in our daily grind. However, getting in a warm-up is non-negotiable if we want to live and train pain free. Now, that doesn’t mean spending a half hour riding the foam roller like a slip n slide. A good warm up should consist of mobility work, corrective and activation exercises, and prime the body for whatever your big lift of the day will be. So, if you are going to grind it out in the squat rack, your better be adding some squats to you warm up. MOST IMPORTANTLY, your warmup should take 10-15 minutes at most! Don’t spend your whole workout warming up. You are there to train.
Everyone needs self-care
Self-care can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I, myself, am partial to blocking off 5 minutes at the end of my workout to perform breathing techniques in order to reduce stress and prepare me for the day ahead. Self-care could be booking that massage you have been telling yourself you would book for the past month or getting some dry needling or acupuncture sessions in to decrease tension. Life is stressful, and we know stress is a huge factor in pain management. So, stop neglecting yourself, and do a little self-care. Your body and mind both need it.
These are just a few tips to get you started on living, and more importantly moving, Pain Free. Waking up, living, training, and moving with pain is not a normal part of life. You are not “just getting old”, and that knee pain will probably not “go away on its own”.
Try some of these tips, and see if you notice an improvement in your pain. If not, maybe its time to see a Physical Therapist and take a deeper look into your pain and how to relieve it.
