What to do when it hurts to exercise?
By Dr. Joshua Kiely, DC
As a chiropractor in Kanata/Ottawa, I see a ton of active patients who are running, swimming, biking, or lifting on a regular basis and I always try my best to encourage them to maintain these habits for the mental and physical benefits they offer. Unfortunately, patients frequently report that they are having difficulty doing the activity they like because of an ache or pain that seemingly has popped up out of nowhere.
Whether it’s a sore shoulder in the breaststroke, a crunchy hip after running, or a tense low back while lifting weights, the guiding principles behind how we modify the activities to reduce pain can be simple and effective.
This blog will cover three pain-reducing strategies you can begin using right away!
IMPORTANT: everyone is different and sometimes pain can’t be avoided or modified easily. Having a chiropractor or other professional to help you navigate painful activity and guide you to a full return to your activity can be very helpful when you can’t seem to get aches or pains under control on your own. (If you are curious what it means for me to be a chiropractor, check out the blog here)
Strategy 1: Reduce the volume of activity temporarily.
Sometimes when we have pain it’s because we haven’t found a balance between activity and recovery. For example, my home city of Ottawa offers beautiful outdoor trails and parks throughout the Summer and it’s tough to resist biking, running, or paddling (even when things hurt).
When we factor in the stresses of life, kids, work and a million other influences, it can further reduce our capacity to recover from lots of activity. Sometimes pain is our body's way of telling us to slow down (but don’t stop) while our recovery catches up to our activity level.
In practice, reducing activity volume can be very simple. For example, if you’re running 30km a week and it is currently aggravating, try bringing your running mileage down to 20km a week. From this point you can gradually work back up to 30km or more.
Another example of modifying exercise volume would be to reduce the total volume of lifts in the gym. Perhaps you’re performing a 3 day full body split for resistance training and when you count up all your sets you are between 20-30 sets per body part. You could try reducing volume to 10-20 sets per body part and then begin the process of slowly increasing volume as you feel up to it.
Strategy 2: Focus on recovery
Sports, lifting, and exercise can all be fun, usually make us feel great, and are hugely rewarding physically and mentally. If we are trying to maintain a high level of activity it’s important to be just as diligent with a high level of recovery. This is not nearly as fun or exciting as performing the activities we love, but it is every bit as important.
The nice thing about recovery strategies is that they can be very simple and effective without needing a ton of effort to maintain. Try focusing on these three major recovery strategies to feel better and have less pain:
Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
This may be very challenging depending on the stress that’s going on in your life, but if you can find ways to improve your sleep you’ll be improving your recovery dramatically.
Good sleep hygiene can include turning your phone off an hour before bed, keeping your bedroom cool and dark, and trying to go to sleep and wake at the same time daily.
Eat lots of nutritious food.
Our bodies need fuel to operate, so let’s use premium fuel instead of the lousy stuff. Vegetables, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are all important for recovery.
Depending on your goals you may even be able to tweak your nutrition around exercise to improve recovery further. Stay tuned for more articles about this in the coming months.
Manage stress in your day-to-day life.
I hate asking people how stressed they are from 1-10 in the chiropractic office because it’s so hard to give a proper answer. Instead of focusing on trying to reduce all types of mental, emotional, or physical stress in our life, I think it may be worthwhile to ensure we have good coping tools to manage this stress in a healthy and effective way.
Stress management can be as simple as a deep breathing practice performed daily, journaling, or perhaps yoga with mindfulness. Find an activity that makes you feel relaxed and do it a few times a week.
Strategy 3: Temporarily change the activities we’re doing.
Sometimes when we try to push through pain, we’re really just making our body feel more sensitive and aggravated. There are some circumstances where we may need to work through some pain, for example certain tendon injuries or if we’re in a competition that means a ton to us, but generally we want to keep pain tolerable so that we can enjoy the activities we're doing. A simple activity swap can often reduce pain and sensitivity while allowing us to slowly build back up to the activities we love the most.
If running hurts, try speed walking or cycling. (For a long love letter to walking, check out this blog post I wrote during peak COVID lockdowns while I could hardly stand to stay cooped up inside anymore.) If you’re feeling sore with back squats, switch to front squats or goblet squats. If the breaststroke hurts try the doggie paddle instead (disclaimer: I am not a swimmer).
Story time… earlier this year I started getting a nagging pain in my left thigh with back squats. It wasn’t there all the time, but it was getting worse, and eventually it made going up stairs painful and getting up from a chair was agony.
Initially, I was stubborn and tried to work through the pain (that didn’t fix it unsurprisingly). It was only when my workouts were really suffering that I finally decided to make a change and swap out back squats for front squats for a few months… and I hate front squats. Since then, I’ve successfully begun back squatting again without pain, and while I still hate front squats, I’ve actually gotten a lot better at them (see above Instagram post for proof).
So the takeaway is, at least in the short term, try avoiding the aggravating activity to reduce your sensitivity to it, and find progress elsewhere by trying out a variety of different activities.
The benefits of exercise are extensive, and by staying active even when we have pain, we are actually improving our chances of a full recovery and maintaining good health while we work around injury. Who knows, you may even find a new activity that you actually really enjoy.
Let’s recover so we can get back to the fun stuff.
Sometimes the fix for pain is simple and we can get straight back to the activities we love. Other times pain can be complicated and frustrating and we may need some help to manage it. My job as a chiropractor in Ottawa is to help people navigate their pain and get back to the activities they love with the least hassle possible.
Often my role as a chiropractor is to help with the detective work and find out which factors are influencing one’s pain the most. Some hands-on care including muscle release therapy, acupuncture, or spinal manipulation therapy can be helpful for dealing with symptoms, but ultimately successful recoveries come down to patients learning more about what triggers their pain and finding ways to improve and overcome their symptoms.
So there you have it. When it hurts to exercise, try these strategies out, and if you’re not getting the results you want please get in touch. Under the umbrella of Spine Ottawa, I offer affordable mobile care in Kanata and the surrounding area, clinic care in Centretown and Westboro, and virtual care that is accessible anywhere in Ontario.
