Pain is something we all experience at one point or another. Now, there can be two different reasons for pain. Reason one, would be someone who has a very sedentary lifestyle with very little physical activity whatsoever. If you are a person who has a desk job, or sits the majority of your day, and then when your work day is done, you head straight for the couch until you head to bed, that is ALOT of sitting and very little moving. If someone continues to repeat this daily schedule over a long period of time, I can almost guarantee they are going to develop quite a few aches and pains. You will probably begin to notice your back aches, you may find your knees start to hurt if you have to climb more stairs than usual, doing your daily activities can start to feel very difficult.
One day, this person decides to make a change, they want to be able to run around with their grandkids on the weekend, or they want to be able to climb a flight of stairs without having to take a break halfway through. So they decide to join a gym. All of a sudden, they are squatting, jumping, running and lifting. This is far from what their daily life has looked like for the past ten years, so guess what, they are going to feel some discomfort the first few weeks/months they start moving their bodies in ways they aren’t used to. This is a different type of pain they haven’t felt before, and we sometimes see clients assume the worst scenario has happened and they have pulled a muscle or have seriously injured themselves to the point of not being able to continue to work out. As coaches, we will see this a lot with clients just due to the environment we work in. People are pushing themselves out of their comfort zones, moving more, lifting heavier weights and breathing harder. There are many benefits that come from being more active and pushing yourself, but often times, doing so will result in some sort of pain or discomfort at some point in time.
A “common error” that can occur frequently, when someone first experiences pain or discomfort while working out is right at the time of the pain, our brain automatically goes right to thinking the worst has happened. “I must have pulled something”, is something that we hear a lot, or, “I haven’t been to the gym in a week because I hurt my hamstring last week.”
If you have recently just started working out, you will definitely notice you are going to have some aches and pains. Unfortunately, pain is something we just can’t avoid, especially if we are pushing our bodies a little harder than we are used to. Now, I’m not talking about serious injuries that require urgent medical attention and weeks and months of therapy post injury, but the daily aches and pains that basically everyone will experience. We just wanted to give you guys a couple tips as to how to work your way out of your pain.
The biggest advice we can give to you guys, would be to not stop exploring your body, to see what movements cause you pain, what movements make it feel better, go get different opinions from physiotherapists, massage therapist or chiropractors, and continue to do so until we are pain free. And we don’t want to just solely rely on someone else to do the work for us. Yes, go see a PT, go for a massage, but that only equals about one to two hours out of your week, so make sure you are working on your body yourself during those other hours in the day as well. We have to make sure we are taking recovery into our own hands and not just relying on others. This transfers over to all aspects of health and fitness as well, coaches, friends, PT’s can only do so much for you, but if you’re not willing to do any work yourself after hours, you’re only going to get so far.
We also don’t want our clients thinking that the workout written on the board for the day is the end all be all. We want our clients to know that we can modify or even make a specific workout that will help an individual work through their own specific pain.
At the end of the day, we want our members to be better in tune with their bodies, and listen to what may be a serious pain, or maybe it’s something we as coaches can work on alongside you to alleviate. All we really want is our clients to be able to move outside the gym in their daily lives, and be able to enjoy all the good things in life with as little pain and discomfort as possible. It’s just about living your best and healthiest life with the people you love!