Should You Exercise Through Pain?

Inconveniently there's not a black and white "yes" or "no" answer.

As always you can use your self agency and personal level of awareness to choose whether to push on regardless, modify somehow or stop completely.

But are you making an informed decision, or reacting from a place of ego, scarcity or fear?

Here are 3x knowledge nuggets about pain::

• Pain is felt when your brain thinks you're in danger
• Pain is NOT always an accurate indicator of physical damage, BUT it IS a sign that your brain / nervous system / body are unhappy or afraid in some way
• Pain can become a learned, habitual response to a frequent trigger

My first mentor, Ben Cormack, likened pain to an alarm that can become over-sensitive. Think of a car alarm that gets tripped by a cat walking on the bonnet. 

This image below shows the evolution of pain and factors that influence pain. 

Early man had less experience of fire and put his toes too close to the flames. The pain from the burns stopped him from doing it again (hopefully!).

Modern man has learned from the painful experiences of his ancestors to keep his toes well away from the fire. The belief that touching fire will be painful is a pretty deep core belief for most of us, and we'll avoid getting too close = AVOIDANCE.

Ben also introduced me to the Biopsychosocial model which forms the basis of modern pain science:

The biopsychosocial model proposes that pain has many contributing factors, especially chronic pain which persists for 6 months or longer.

Can you now see why pain hurts but isn't always an accurate indicator of physical damage or harm?

Here's how the biopsychosocial model of pain plays out in the body:

You can see how everything funnels through the brain for analysis and action, so if you can alter the inputs to the brain you can influence the outcome.

This is good news, because now there's a way to change your pain yourself!

Feeling pain will generally cause you to move differently to protect the painful or injured area, but when the pain has gone your body may not get the memo to return back to how you originally moved.

The longer you feel pain, the less likely you'll be to return back to your original patterns pre-pain. 

Here's why:

You can see from the image above that injury, pain or the fear of getting hurt leads to changes in the nervous system. These are your stress responses - 'fight or flight' and freeze - that leads to your body reacting in one of the 3x stress reflexes - Green (go-go-go) light / Red (startle) light / Trauma reflex ( see the previous blog article).

The nervous system begins to alter muscle behaviour, which then affects how the joints function. You'll notice an increase in muscle tension and stiffness as your body goes into protection mode.

Your movements change. You might limp to offload the weight off one leg, hitch a hip up, hold one shoulder higher, tilt your head or bend your spine into a scoliosis.

Now some structures start to bear more or less load or move in a direction that they weren't designed for by nature. This leads to more discomfort and a cycle of pain -> adaptive movement patterns -> discomfort / stiffness -> pain begins.

If these changes only happen for a short time and you can return back to how you originally moved there's less chance of long-term disability and pain.

But the longer you stay in this protective pattern, long-term consequences become more likely. You'll continue to experience discomfort, stiffness, reduced mobility and, eventually, 'wear and tear' from using structures in a way they weren't designed for over a prolonged period of time. 

So should you exercise through pain?

I hope this article has shown that there isn't a right or wrong, yes or no answer. 

Pain has many contributing factors so it comes down to individual self agency and self awareness.

Whatever your choice, I hope you make an informed decision and this blog has helped to illustrate the short-term and long-term consequences of moving through pain.