Pain that occurs during a workout can be frustrating. It can cause some people to feel as though they must push through the pain and continue the workout routine, risking permanent injury. Others will avoid working out altogether because of the fear of permanent injury.
If you experience shoulder pain during the bench press, hip pain during squats, or back pain during the deadlift, the tips below may be some approach that can help you continue training while mitigating the pain.
Is Pain Only Occurring While You’re Lifting Heavier Loads?
Try to train right below the pain threshold.
For example, try to drop the weight by 10 or 15 pounds if you’re experiencing pain during lifting. In order to keep your training routine on track, if dropping the weight helps with the pain, offset this by increasing the repetitions that you perform.
If you don’t try to consistently train around the pain, your pain may last longer because the muscle will be deconditioned and stressed every time you try to start your workout routine again. Also, if you stop lifting altogether, there will be no further stimulation for the muscles in pain to learn to adapt. Try to train right below the weight where the pain starts to occur and if the pain decreases or stops, you can work your way back to your target training weight.
Train with lighter weight and higher repetitions for a few weeks (depending on your body's ability to adapt) to desensitize the pain before slowing increasing the weight back to your current load.
Sometimes, The Pain Will Still Be Present With Lighter Loads
If you find that lighter loads don’t decrease or absolve the pain, you may benefit from a form or ROM modification for your workout.
For example - If you've pain at full depth of the squat, instead of doing a full squat, try performing a box squat. This will involve squatting the same weight load, but stop squatting at a height that is directly above where the pain begins.
Slight form modifications, such as widening your leg stance while squatting, or widening your grip when using the bench press, may lessen the pain, as well.
Form Modifications Don’t Always Help
If you find that modifying your form doesn’t help, it may be best for you to stop the painful exercise altogether until the pain doesn’t occur. You can, however, train with a similar exercise that doesn’t cause you pain to perform. You simply want to regress enough to stop the pain, but you don’t want to stop working out that part of your body altogether.
There's always an alternative to exercising that particular muscle group. Find one that doesn't hurt.
Often times than not, it is never a good idea to stop training altogether. There will always be another option. Resting for weeks or months will decondition the muscles. When you start training again after many weeks of rest, it's back to square one and the pain might still be lingering.
Seek Help
Alternatively, you can always seek for professional help to check on your technique flaws, if any. Perhaps there might be some stability or mobility restrictions that are causing unnecessary pain. The issue with workout programs nowadays is that they hardly ever train the stability and mobility aspects. It's not all about load and reps.
WhatsApp us at 8782752 to book a session.