An Intro to Pain and Pain Rehab
Everyone experiences pain.
Whether its thigh muscle pain several days after a long, hard run or acute pain below the knee when descending a steep hill or in a deep squat. Pain can be scary especially when it’s not going away or when you don’t know why you’re experiencing it. The purpose of this post is to discuss a bit more about why we experience pain and how to listen to it.
Pain is like an alarm.
It doesn’t necessarily indicate that damage has been done or that you are doing harm but it’s giving us a heads up that there may be something to look into. Pain is not something to be feared but something to be understood. Sometimes it’s okay and it’s something you can work through and other times it’s a very meaningful warning that needs to be heeded or risk a more protracted pain period.
There are a handful of ways that we gauge how we should respond to pain.
Most people have been asked how intense the pain is from 0 to 10, zero being no pain, 10 being hand in boiling oil. The most basic method we use, at The Movement, is the “stoplight” method where we qualify the green zone awareness of difference or less than 3/10, the yellow zone as tolerable or 4-6/10 and the red zone as severe, sharp or >6/10. In general we tell people they can spend as much time as they want in the green zone and occasionally they can go into the yellow zone but we should stay out of the red zone.
That said, if any of the following occur than it may be worth seeking further guidance:
1. Progressive in nature during the activity as opposed to “warming-up”
2. Pain that persists after stopping the activity for greater than 15-20 minutes
3. Delayed onset pain (sometimes called a pain hangover)
4. Significant swelling associated with the pain
Remember, pain is one of the many ways that our body is trying to communicate with us. Rarely are we in a case where we need to completely avoid an activity but rather in most cases we need to identify ways that we can modify activities. These modifications may look different depending on the individual, the activity they are going to engage in, and the environment they are performing the activity within. For example when considering a person running we may take a look at factors like distance, elevation, duration, speed, treadmill/road/trail, frequency of running, or technical difficulty of terrain.
Not all training sessions are equal
Which is great because this means there are many different aspects of the activity we can explore for modification. We know it is important to continue engaging in valued activities for many reasons, and generally speaking outcomes are better for people with pain when they do continue those activities. This is why our number one aim is to keep you engaging in the activities you love whenever possible.
As physiotherapists
It’s our job to rule out any significant issues that could indicate a need for further investigation or a more significant rest period, help uncover the causes of your pain, identify factors that may be contributing to the persistence of pain, provide a means of eliminating your pain and create a plan to bulletproof you against your pain returning.
For more information about pain, and a specific example related to the content in this article, we’ve created an ebook that is free to download! Check it out below