The 4 Step Process To Relieving Pain To Get You Back To What You Love Doing.
Being in pain sucks. Like really sucks.
Especially when the movements that cause you pain are needed for the activities you enjoy doing.
Such as bending over when you try to deadlift with your friends in the gym.
Or, lifting your arms overhead to cast a fishing pole in the summer on the beach or your boat.
Or, pain in your knee every time you go to jump during your rec league basketball game. Pain is annoying and a deterrent to simply just living your life. Many clinicians will advise you to simply stop doing what causes you pain.
But, here is why that doesn’t work for us – and I’m assuming you.
Removing activities that give you joy in life and are fulfilling for you doesn’t push you towards a higher quality of life, it pulls you back. It may not even be what is needed to resolve your pain and complete rest may even delay healing or cause more or different issues. The decision to rest or actively treat the cause of your pain will always depend on what may be going on, but, to always revert back to “if it hurts, never do that again” is not how we operate.
Let’s dive in to how to relieve painful movement patterns and then get you back to doing what you love.
Step 1) Avoid Painful Patterns Initially
What?? Isn’t this contradicting what was just said? Well not really. The goal is to get you out of pain and then get you back to doing the thing that caused you pain. However, working through significant pain levels is not a good thing. When our brain is consistently getting danger signals during certain movements that manifest as pain, you begin to associate this movement with pain and we don’t want that. Additionally, the pain you are experiencing may be from inflamed or even injured tissue.Thus, we want to refrain from moving into those painful ranges of motion to allow the body to do its things and kickstart the healing process.
Step 2) Find A Way To Train The Surrounding Area
This one is a huge step. The last thing you want to do when you are injured or experiencing pain is to allow the surrounding area to become de-conditioned. The reason being is that now not only will you be in pain but, that is now compounded with decreased resiliency and capacity of the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones in the area. So once pain has been removed you then must start from scratch to improve the capacity of the movement pattern. As well as address imbalances that may have been created. An example of avoiding a painful movement pattern while continuing to train the area would be removing deadlifts but performing bridging exercises, hamstring curls and arch holds. All of which train the muscle required for the hinge pattern but don’t require the actual hinge movement.
Step 3) Determine The Cause Of Pain
So, this one I think is the most obvious one and you may be wondering why it is not first or second. The reason for this in my opinion, is that avoiding pain initially and making sure to keep the area fit is more important to your function than immediately determining the cause of pain. Like I mentioned in step 2, If we put the brakes on all training until we know exactly whats gong on, physical and mental health can decline as a result of being sedentary or tissues within the area can weaken. Nevertheless, we need to identify and then address what caused your pain in the first place whether that be injured tissue, faulty movement mechanics or issues with your program design. Once we do, we can ensure it never come back again and we can move into the final piece of the puzzle – getting you back to doing what you love, building capacity back to normal and going beyond.
Step 4) Begin To Load The Pattern Again
By now you have avoided being in consistent pain, maintained the fitness of the surrounding area to the best of your ability and addressed what the root cause of your pain was in the first place. The final step is to begin practicing and loading the movement that was painful (which now should be completely or mostly pain free). The key to this step is to not rush into pre pain levels of performance. Given that pain is a poor indicator of tissue damage and doing to much to soon can lead you right back into pain. You want to start very basic and easy, then progress intensity and volume in a step wise fashion until pre painful levels are reached. Once you have progressed enough to where the movements is pain free and you are lifting the same weight, running the same distance, playing the same games etc. you ave successfully rehabbed your painful movement pattern!
I hope you now have some insight into how we work with clients who come to us looking for help with their pain. Complete rest or even surgery may be exactly what you need. But, it also may not be. Your body was made to move and adapt to better function. The irony around pain is that faulty movement can lead to it overtime but, it is also the thing you may need to relieve your pain.
