Moving through pain and injury

Strength and conditioning coach Izac Hutchison and I have had many conversations about this topic and so I wanted to share it. My intention is that next time you’re experiencing pain or an injury you can remain calm and feel motivated to keep moving.

Moving through pain and injury

I don’t understand when practitioners & health professionals tell their clients to stop going to the gym.

Sure, there is a time and place for when we need to rest, but overall moving & loading our body is key for pain management.

Let's take an ACL tear for example.

This is going to be a long process either way, and there will be an initial stage after the tear where some rest is needed, but ideally, we want to get moving as soon as possible. This is because to actually get ourselves back to those meaningful activities, we have to get strong & mobile again. And we can’t do this with a few banded exercises in our bedroom, we need to be as strong, if not stronger, than what we were previous to the injury.

If we stay sedentary for a significant period of time, we are just delaying this process even more. You may not be squatting 100kg straight away, or achieving full knee bends, but you need to start somewhere, and getting there will take consistency in moving and loading your body, which does not happen from extended periods of time off.

Even if we just look at some more common pains/injuries we see every day such as strains, inflammation and tendinopathy, these need loading too.

A common factor for people experiencing pain & injury is due to them exceeding their tolerance level, this means that they are doing too much for what they can handle. So you can imagine, if we take too much time off, our tolerance level will actually decrease and the pain will come more easily than before!

This is why I do not understand when practitioners & health professionals tell their clients to stop lifting weights. We actually want these people to be lifting in some capacity as soon as possible. Just know, pain does not equal harm. You will probably experience pain in your training at stages, just make sure it's at a comfortable level for you and that you are seeing improvements over time.

By Izac Hutchinson, Strength and Conditioning coach, Vice Fitness & Motion Owner