Top 5 Fridays! 5 Ways to Modify an Exercise Around Pain

5 Ways to Modify an Exercise Around Pain - themanualtherapist.com

Strength training and loaded exercises have been known to improve resilience and tolerance to the many tissues in our body. When an exercise becomes painful, an individual’s intuitions might say to avoid the exercise because it is dangerous.

5 Ways to Modify an Exercise Around Pain by Cameron Faller
Most likely, that is not the case and there are several ways someone can modify the same exercise around pain.

👉Reduce the Weight - Simply dropping the weight lessens the load tolerance on the painful tissues and will allow you to continue performing the same exercise gradually building the weight back up.

👉Reduce the Repetitions - Performing less repetitions also lessens the load for a temporary time when you can either increase the weight or begin to gradually increase the repetitions as your body recovers.

👉Modify Range of Motion - This may be a temporary solution to still allow you to perform the same exercise without fluctuating the weight or repetitions.

👉Modify Posture/Position - Simple postural changes may be able to disperse the stress away from painful tissues. This is considered movement exploration where people may be able to make one simple change such as pointing toes out, screwing the feet in the ground, putting your shoulders in front of a barbell, etc. This may make all the difference between a structurally strong movement pattern and a painful one.

👉Perform a Preparatory Stretch/Movement - When performing more dynamic movements, simply breaking the movement down into one of its parts to prepare the body for may result in a more pain free exercise.

When recovering from an injury, pain does not need to be completely avoided but there are several ways that may lessen those symptoms to allow the body to recover better. There is no such thing as No Pain; No Gain but before ditching an important dynamic loaded exercise, make sure you go through these variations to optimize your recovery.

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