How to Train Without Pain

Train without pain is good marketing and slightly bad advice. A more useful goal is training in a way that does not make things worse, and that lets you keep doing the thing you enjoy while the problem settles.

Pain is information, not a verdict

Pain does not reliably tell you how damaged a tissue is. It tells you that your nervous system has decided something needs protecting. That decision is influenced by load, sleep, stress, and how worried you are about the pain itself.

This matters, because it means the answer to most niggles is not rest. It is adjustment.

The rules we give patients

Use a simple 0 to 10 scale. Pain at 0 to 3 during activity is acceptable, so carry on. Pain at 4 to 5 means modify, so reduce load, range, or speed until it drops. Pain above 5 means stop that movement for today and find another way to train.

Whatever you do, it should settle back to your baseline within 24 hours. If you are worse the next morning, the dose was too high.

Modify, do not eliminate

If a movement hurts, the useful question is not whether you should stop training. It is what version of this you can do today.

Squats painful? Reduce depth, slow the tempo, or switch to a split stance. Pressing overhead painful? Move to an incline, or a landmine press. Running painful? Shorten the run, flatten the route, or switch to a bike or the pool for a fortnight while you build strength.

Removing an entire movement pattern for weeks tends to make it more sensitive, not less. Keeping a tolerable version of it in your week keeps the tissue loaded and keeps you in the habit.

The things people skip

Sleep and total weekly load do more for pain than any single exercise. Most flare ups we see follow a week of poor sleep, a sudden jump in training, or both at once.

Track your weekly volume in whatever way suits you. Big jumps are the single most common cause of the injuries we treat.

When to get help

If a niggle has not improved in three to four weeks despite sensible modification, or it is getting worse week on week, get it assessed. Guessing for months is more expensive than one appointment.