Got Pain?

Muscle soreness, tendinitis, arthritis and even nerve pain - If you’ve got pain somewhere in your body, how do you know what’s happening?

In 20 years of training thousands and thousands of people, I have YET to work with someone that didn’t encounter some form of pain along the way. Myself included.

It’s common to panic and think the worst when something on your body starts to hurt, but it might be helpful to have a better idea of what’s going on when you experience pain and what you can do about it.

In today’s episode, I want to help you be able to tell the difference between certain types of pains you might be feeling in your body, and what you can do about it.

I know that sometimes you might get a painful spot here and there, or maybe a chronic pain, and you’re not sure if:

1. That means something is damaged
2. If it’s something you should push through
3. What you can do to get the pain to go away so you can move on with your life

I recently was sent a question by a fellow podcast listener of yours named Phoenicia. Check this out:

Phoenicia: I want to ask you about pain. I get in some muscles, and it's not the pain that you get after you've been doing your exercise, you've been working out, and the next day, or even the day after, you think, yeah, I can feel that. I hadn't used that muscle for a while. But it's more the pain that happens while you're maybe in the middle of an exercise or sometimes even when you pick up a water jug and you go, oh. And you go, oh, my God. And you know you're going to be in pain and for the next few days, and you're going to be restricted in your movement. It just hurts. And it really takes a few days to get your mobility back again. I'm always wondering what exactly happens in a moment like that? Why does it happen and how can we prevent it? And, yeah, what can we do and what can we do when it has happened? What's the best way to treat it?

So Much Pain

Not surprisingly, the questions I get asked the most have to do with pain. (What do I do about my knee? Something got tweaked in my hip, what’s going on? My shoulder is hurting all of a sudden. My low back is in constant pain, what should I do?)

The truth is our bodies are living organisms, not machines made of metal. Even machines made of metal break.

• And unfortunately, when you work your body a lot, there’s a lot of opportunities for things to break a little bit, which can lead to pain
• And even on the flipside, when you don’t work your body, there are even more opportunities for things to break and hurt.

So, I don’t want you to be shocked or extremely discouraged when something starts hurting.

• Story about my coaching call with Donna - had been training so diligently, was getting stronger and a lot of her everyday aches and pains were going away, but suddenly she hurt her hip. And that was super discouraging to her, and I had to just tell her that this is sometimes just part of the process. We’ll avoid these situations as much as we can, but you can’t avoid them altogether.

The good news here is that the more fit and healthy you are, the chances of pain and injuries really do go down. It doesn’t eliminate it all together, but you will experience it less and less - no matter how old you are.

4 Most Common Types of Pain

In my experience in the strength and conditioning world, there are four types of pain that seem to be the most common and these are the ones you’re most likely to encounter. I don’t want you to think of this like I’m giving you a tool to self-diagnose here, but this might shed some light on what’s going when you feel pain.

Pain in a muscle

• Super common and is most likely what Phoenicia is referring to
• What it feels like: The muscle hurts, it’s not really a joint, things might feel suddenly painful when you move a certain way, it didn’t come on over time, and it tends to gradually get better over a few days
  • This could be soreness from exercising - you did some new movements that you haven’t done in a while or with a new load of weight. Maybe it’s a dull muscle ache or maybe it’s really big muscle soreness
    • Example: The “toilet test” after doing squats or deadlifts
  • Or quite often it’s cramping or guarding - you moved in a way that your body didn’t like, and the muscles kind of seized up to protect themselves from tearing (it’s a pretty cool reflex mechanism)
    • Example: Neck cramps
• What to do about it: move your muscles through a comfortable range of motion, don’t be stationary, apply heat, work the opposing muscle groups, it will probably resolve in 1-3 days
• How to prevent it: more strength & conditioning for those specific muscle groups

Muscle/tendon strain or a ligament sprain

The year of 2023 was the year of the proximal hamstring tendinopathy for me.

• I overstretched my right hamstrings trying to do the splits, the tendons that connect the hamstring right up into the pelvis got strained and damaged, and it took about 10 months to fully resolve. I felt it all the time.

Tendons are what attach your muscles to your bones, ligaments are what connect joints together - they can both get damaged (strain vs. sprain), varying degrees

• I’m sure you’ve heard of tendinitis, but a lot of tendon issues are now being referred to as tendinopathies - like medial glute tendinopathy (that’s a pretty common one)
• What it feels like: a sharp pain, sometimes a dull ache in one spot - typically right around a joint or the attachment points - that lingers and doesn’t really go away - sometimes rubbing it might make it feel better
• Common examples: deep glute, elbows, shoulder impingement, meniscus, SI joint
• What to do about it: ice & rest at first, gentle training and heat beyond that, time, avoiding any pain with movement - do NOT push through the pain with these ones, may take months to heal
• How to prevent it: strength & conditioning, proper technique

Nerve pain

This is a doozy and it can be combined with those other types of pain

• What it feels like: Shooting pain, sometimes a dull ache, can cover a full region, may lead to feelings of weakness and even tingling
• Common examples: sciatica, thoracic outlet syndrome, pelvic floor nerve pain
• What to do about it: alignment, gentle stretching that might include nerve flossing or gliding to get the nerve to more easily stretch and glide, reduce tension on the surrounding muscles, in some cases it can take a while to resolve, while in other cases the relief might feel instantaneous
• How to prevent it: Alignment, proper strength and flexibility of surrounding muscles

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is an extremely common type of pain in people 40 and older. It’s caused by a degradation of the cartilage surrounding the joint and eventually you might experience bone-on-bone. It’s like a wearing down of the joint.

• What it feels like: Dull ache in a joint, tends to improve once you’ve warmed up, especially bad first thing in the morning or after sitting still for a while
• What to do about it: movement, heat, anti-inflammatories, surround it with muscles
• How to prevent it: strength & conditioning, proper technique, anti-inflammatory lifestyle

All the pains…

Just in the last month, I’ve had coaching calls with ladies that are experiencing:

• A ligament sprain along the front of their hip - She did a stretch to deep and it made her inguinal ligament sprain a little bit.
• Nerve compression in the neck making her entire left arm weak and sore
• Chronic low back pain as a result of muscle guarding there and some nerve compression, which was because of her weak core muscles
• Osteoarthritis in the knee that was making it so just walking down her driveway hurt

In each of these scenarios, what helped these women the most was simply hearing that it wasn’t the end of the world. Their body wasn’t falling apart - maybe this one spot is having a little tantrum - and we can still work through this in very intentional ways.

• And all of them are doing great!

A better solution.

I think when we experience pain, we either

• panic and think the worst, catastrophizing it
• or we ignore it, thinking that by ignoring it and pushing through the pain it will eventually go away

Honestly neither of those are good solutions.

• If you are experiencing pain of any kind, here’s your quote for the day: “Be an active participant in your healing process.”
• Don’t just sit on the sidelines hoping and praying. There is still SO much you can do for your body.

And by the way, if your pain happens to be in your back and hips, I’ve got a full program for that: My Back & Hip Fix program.

More Resources & Links

Episode 319. 3 Simple Hip Mobility Exercises for Hip Osteoarthritis

The Back & Hip Fix Program - Significantly decrease your back and hip pain in 30 days!

The Jumpstart 30 Program for Beginners - Improve your strength, mobility & general conditioning in 30 days!

💪 FREE Weekly Jumpstart Newsletter - Subscribe to the Weekly Jumpstart newsletter for simple fitness, nutrition & mindset tips specifically for women 40+!

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