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The benefits of exercise are vast. Our bodies feel better for it. Our mental health and well-being are lifted because of exercising. We are able to move much easier. These are wonderful attributes exercise brings us. At the same time, our body is placed on a demand whilst we do a workout. At certain times, there are going to be aches and pains which appear. These soreness’s are natural when it comes to exercise because we are pushing past what we normally find comfortable.

When approaching these soreness’s, try not to be frightened and rule out exercise as it is ‘bad’ for your body. Rather take a step back to understand what is an ache and what is a pain.

 

Soreness – Ache

Think of an ache as something that is muscular related. Use this example; So you have just done a heavy legs workout and the day after, you start walking around. You start to feel your muscles get sore as you lower your body up & down out of bed & chairs. The legs are feeling ‘achy’. It is not that your legs are injured. Or even hurting you to the point where you cannot do things. It is just a little bit uncomfortable as you start to lift your body weight up and down.

That soreness is what we call as D.O.M.S. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is normal when it comes to exercise. Don’t be afraid of this.

Soreness – Pain

Compare this to a pain. A pain is something that is heading towards an injury or hindering you day to day living. The niggling soreness or injury appears whether you have done a workout or not. Take this has a sign that you will have to start seeing another health professional to help manage through this. With an aim to be able to alter any exercise or movement patterns that we do inside your routine.

Knowing the difference between an ache and a pain is a great step forward because you still want to exercise. You understand that there is potentially some soreness’s to come. It is most likely going to be aches that appear because of exercise, we can alter how we train to reduce the pains.

 

Too much, too soon

If you are newer to exercise and you go really hard, early in first weeks of starting. There are higher chances of pains occurring. You are going to feel sore as in pain/injury-based soreness earlier on if continuing this way. Whereas if you monitor the intensity & the load to suit where you are currently at, it may be aches. The more you build into your work out routines, the more you increase the intensity to load in your workouts.

 

Over-Training

Another consideration is over-training. It does not matter if you have been training for six weeks, six months or six years. Over-training can affect all of us if we do too much in the time period that we are allocating ourselves. Now take this example. You have just signed up for an adventure race where you are starting to bike, swim, run, and paddle. Now you begin thinking how to get ready for the event. Normally you are training three or four times a week with running & weights. With the extra 3 disciplines you start training six or seven times a week to fit it all in. After three to four weeks your shoulder starts hurting, and knee starts going.

Take a step back to look at how much extra you are now training. Your body hasn’t adjusted to the demands you are placing on it, particularly with different disciplines. That is over-training, doing too much at that current point in time for your body to handle. Gradually work into that the increases to prevent pains from occurring.

 

Build good movement patterns

Much like the frequency of our exercise and the time we have been training we need to look at the quality of our movement  to make sure that the pains don’t start appearing.

You might be getting stronger and the aches are not so frequent now. But if your technique isn’t the greatest you will start to feel pain appearing.

In the example using a shoulder press. The pattern you do is having the arms going forward rather than upwards it will present a problem later. The more weight you increase to is when you are going to probably start finding pain in your shoulder join. Take a moment to assess how a technique goes with any of our movement patterns, this may avoid pains developing.

 

Recovery Activities

We generally feel great when we get our heart rates up in a conditioning phase or feeling strong lifting/pushing weights. We feel strong & filled with endorphins afterwards. Later, our body needs to recover. And if we do not put the recovery activities into our schedules, our muscles are not able repair themselves.

Now, our recovery does not mean we have to stop for three days and do nothing. It can mean we just do a different form of movement or activity. Maybe go for a swim, something that is totally different to what you are used to doing. Possibly go out and do a new skill like SUP paddle boarding or rock climbing. You may even get outside and spend some time with your children, like doing a yoga session. By reducing the workload and the intensity, you’re still moving but you’re allowing your body to recover from the demand you would have been putting on it through your workouts.

 

I hope you can take one point away from this. That in exercise, there will be some aches, i.e. muscle soreness. What we want to try and avoid is any pain (or injuries) by understanding how to move better, training not too hard too often, and doing it in a time period that is relevant to your goals.