We get questions all the time in the clinic on whether or not someone should stop running, stop doing deadlifts, stop playing pickleball, or pretty much any other exercise or activity you can think of that might be causing some discomfort or pain.
The answer, as always, is it depends. If you’ve been here a while, you know our short answer is that avoidance to the activity resulting in pain, rest until it feels better, then start again is NOT the answer and will land you in a repetitive cycle of hurt --> rest --> repeat.
But what IS the best guide to when you should scale back or continue?
When we’re rehabbing an injury it’s likely that you will experience some level of discomfort as you work your way back into the things you love doing. We like to use the Stop Light System as a quick and easy guide.
First, use a simplified pain scale of 0-10 when you start feeling discomfort. Then use the Green, Yellow, and Red stoplight system.
For example, if you’re getting back into running or pickleball and you’re experiencing 3-5/10 discomfort during your activity or even for a few hours after the activity and then it calms back down – we would consider this a “Yellow Light”. Proceed with caution, but you’re safe to keep doing this distance of run or amount of time playing pickleball. This also means you shouldn’t add distance, speed, or multiple days in a row of this until the yellow light turns to green (0-2 discomfort).
If your level of discomfort gets higher than 5/10, it’s feeling worse as you’re going, or it lingers past 24 hours, this would be considered a “Red Light”. This means you need to decrease the amount of stress placed on your body during the activity by decreasing mileage/speed/time until you’re in the yellow or green zone.
This most often doesn’t mean stop all together, just scale it back to respect what your body can handle at the time. If we completely stop the activity or movement, we can’t expect to jump back into whatever level of activity we were at previously once we’ve “rested” it. We have to give our body time to build up strength and resilience to be able to do said activity. It would be like trying to run a marathon if you haven’t run since high school.
Another example more specific to rehab would be if you’re trying to return to bench pressing after a shoulder injury. If your rehab for the day includes 4 sets of 12 incline press at light weight, and you complete your first set with mild discomfort, don’t throw in the towel entirely. As you complete more sets of this ask yourself, is this feeling better as I go? Is it feeling worse as I go? If it’s feeling better with each set, that’s a green light. If it’s staying the same in the range of 3-4/10 pain with no lingering symptoms, that’s yellow. If it’s getting worse with each set – that’s a red light. It’s telling you that you need to change something. Go lighter, go at a slower tempo, change the angle, or do a similar rehab exercise that doesn’t elicit the discomfort.
The big takeaway here is that rest alone is hardly ever the right answer to when you’re feeling discomfort. Discomfort and pain are our body’s indicators that we are placing more stress or demand on the body that it can physically handle, and it’s telling us to slow down – not to stop. If we stop entirely, how will we build it up so it can handle the stress or demands placed on it?
Luckily, these are conversations we have every day in the clinic and we’re really, really good at making a personalized plan and guide for each client so they CAN do the things they love and they don’t need to count themselves out of never running again, never deadlifting again, or never doing a box jump again. If you’re ready to stop counting yourself out of something you wish you could get back to doing, give us a call. I promise it's much easier when you don’t have to try to do it alone.
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