Soreness Or Pain: How To Build Body Awareness To Stay Fit And Strong

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Hello , hello , welcome back Betsy here . Thanks for being here . I'm grateful to have your ears today to talk about this topic .

We're talking about pain versus soreness , getting a little clearer on what those terms mean , so that we can be really specific with our language and we can better understand our body , tuning into it , being able to interpret the signals and then appropriately make a plan of action with that information .

And part of this is learning about what pain is versus soreness , and then part of it is learning how to actually listen to your body , as well as when to ask for help . So that's what we're talking about today . Before I get into the episode , I have two asks . One is just to remind you of the giveaway . I'm asking people to share the podcast .

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The next thing I want to ask is I'm going to have some guest episodes coming up here , so I'm going to invite guests onto the podcast . We're going to talk all things strength and nutrition and body image and all of that . I'm interested to hear from listeners now who and what you want to hear about . What do you want to hear from other trainers ?

Do you want to hear from specific specialties ? Do you want to hear from people who are actually going through programs or working with a trainer ? Let me know what you're interested in hearing and I will make that happen . It's always nice to know what you're looking for in terms of the podcast , and if you don't know , then that's fine too .

You certainly don't have to answer , but if you have a hankering or if you've listened to a different podcast and you really liked , when you got a chance to hear from this kind of expert or that kind of expert , I'd love to know . All right , let's hop into the episode . So , soreness versus pain .

This is kind of a slippery slope , and what I want to at least acknowledge at the start of this episode is that I am not diagnosing you with this episode , nor do I have the ability to , nor does any other trainer have the ability to .

I had a former teacher who was a trainer who who taught a whole series on sort of pain and movement dysfunction , and he always started the lecture with a story of someone who constantly campaign complained of knee pain and specifically describing it as pain , feeling this like some sort of mass or something , and his first instinct was to probably try to figure it

out for them and to keep them as a client and to keep them coming back .

That went with what was the importance of sorry went with what falls under his scope , which is refer out when someone says they're experiencing that kind of pain and the person turned out to have a form of cancer and it was discovered and treated because they didn't try to address it in the training session .

Now I don't know about like a direct line from that , but that is to say that as personal trainers and people outside of a medical field , when it comes to pain , I am unable to diagnose that and it's really important that if someone is sort of aiming to do that , we make sure that you're going to seek help from someone who actually can do that .

So , whether that be a doctor of physical therapy or whether that be a primary care physician or some kind of specialist , getting that diagnosis from someone who can diagnose . Now , as a personal trainer , I am able to offer my clients some insight on feelings they're having .

If they're having discomfort here or there , if they are experiencing some persistent aches , things that are sort of feeling stiff or feeling constantly sore , I can offer some insight . I can troubleshoot with exercise strategies to help , but I cannot offer a diagnosis and I'm only gonna do that to the extent where we are getting a pretty immediate relief response .

But I'm also going to encourage clients to seek a second opinion . But the important thing in learning about when you need to seek medical advice or when you need to stop training entirely or when you need to get imaging or anything like that , is learning some distinctions between the different kinds of sensations that you're experiencing in your body .

And sometimes that can be tricky because muscle soreness and more acute injury pain can sometimes feel pretty similar and it isn't impossible for those two things to overlap as well . So you can experience injuries related to overall fatigue and then the muscular fatigue that you're experiencing will manifest as soreness .

So those two things that pain and soreness can overlap . But I try to encourage my clients to be really specific about describing their the sensations and describing things as either pain or discomfort or soreness .

And you notice , you know soreness is one thing , discomfort is something that doesn't , something doesn't feel right , it feels sticky or it feels stiff or it feels achy . But pain is a more targeted sensation and it is a clear red light .

I like to use the analogy of the stoplights to be to sort of describe this Muscle soreness in the everyday , the sort of like you train and you feel a little sore the next day , but it is not prohibitive of movement is probably a green light as well as a no pain scenario , a feeling awesome scenario is a green light .

A yellow light is going to be something where , as I described before , you have some of those sticky spots or you feel discomfort at certain ranges of motion or things feel stiff , or you notice some discomfort in different positions and or with different exercises . That's going to be yellow , where we're going to pull back .

We're going to try a few things to sort of see if we can address that and if we can get a pretty immediate change response , and then that will sort of inform us about what we can do . So yellow light means we can still train . Red light is a stop . It is a we have to stop Doesn't mean we're stopping forever .

It means we're stopping for right now , so that we can address this situation . And I think I think there are two . There are kind of two extremes that can be challenging One .

I think some people exist in a space where they are so fearful of that potential for injury that they rush to the red light and forget that there are places , even when we're experiencing pain , ways we can still train .

We're not going to train that thing , or we're not going to train if we need to get imaging first , or anything like that , but there are ways we can not stop movement completely in order to help actually support recovery .

I also think there is a camp of people who tend to be green light all the time , to the point where they ignore the signs and symptoms of serious things and they put so much undue , unneeded stress on their bodies to keep going that they increase the risk of being in that red space for much , much longer .

So we want to find a medium where we can learn how to train around challenges without being negligent , as well as avoiding over-training , avoiding pushing through , becoming the CEO of your own body and understanding your body better than anybody else .

I like that analogy of being the CEO of your own body because if you think about CEOs of these big companies , especially the ones where the CEO is sort of like the poster child for it , they know their company in and out , ideally . I mean , maybe I'm outside of my scope on the business world , but they really know .

They know how things started , they know the steps they took , they know all the information , all of the inputs into their organization . That is what you are going to become for yourself understanding the inputs in your body , understanding what , on a great day , how your body feels On a day when this , this and this happens .

This is how my body feels , so that those morning lights are spotted earlier , you are more attuned and you are also more comfortable in knowing when you can challenge yourself versus when it's time to take a step back .

So , rather than tell you what to feel or do , I'm simply going to kind of go through some of the differences between muscle soreness and more acute pain , so that you can begin to understand again . I'm not diagnosing you , nor am I helping you train in this moment . That's something you have to do with your trainer .

But you can take this information and use it . And then you can take this information and use it in terms of who . Who do I need to speak to if I'm facing challenges or if I'm experiencing any of these things . So let's talk about muscle soreness . Muscle soreness , the feeling that you typically get , is going to be more tender when you touch your muscles .

You might feel it a little bit during exercise , like you feel the burn , but muscle soreness comes after exercise and you might feel like some dull discomfort , consistently in the 48 to 72 hours after exercise .

When we're talking about pain , it is a more intense , ache or sharp , and then it's going to likely . And this is what I , what I'm fearful about talking about this , about what I'm fear , hold on , let me say this again what I'm fearful about here is generalizing .

I want to be really clear that I am generalizing and that there are circumstances where these aren't always the case , but I'm going to generalize for the sake of a more general understanding . That's the point of generalizing Realizing that each individual circumstance is different and you're not taking this for taking it for the Bible . Is that ?

You know what I mean ? You know what I mean . The dog is outside of the room kind of making all these different sounds and he is distracting me . Okay , so I'll blame it on him . That sharp pain can be at rest or while the movement is happening .

Sometimes it's one or the other , sometimes it's both , with soreness again , you might feel the burn , so to speak , as you're exercising , but the onset is going to happen somewhere in that 48 , maybe 24 , 24 to 72 hours post exercise , with pain .

It may be a very specific moment in the activity or it could be within the 24 hours , say , afterward , but a more acute injury . You're going to feel that sensation sooner per se than the muscle soreness .

Here's something to note Muscle soreness , particularly the kind of muscle soreness that we're going to say is okay to experience , is going to last around two to three days , but then it is going to subside . If you're training really consistently and regularly .

It may linger longer because you're constantly sore , but you should be sore in different spots ideally , because your programming should vary enough for that and it shouldn't be the kind of prohibitive soreness that keeps you from being able to train at a high level or whatever your high level is the next time you train .

When we talk about pain , we're going to talk about something that's going to linger likely longer if it isn't addressed . So you might be experiencing that pain for more than those two to three days and if it's not addressed quickly , it could be a week , two weeks , so on , so forth , long term potentially . Ideally we're addressing that .

Muscle soreness is going to be something that you experience within the muscle tissue or the soft tissue Joints , bones , maybe muscles are where you're going to feel pain .

If you're experiencing stuff in your joints , that's going to be something a little bit different than muscle soreness and may signify that we need to take a look at something else , that the culprit is not training too hard or working too hard . The culprit might be something else .

It could be training too hard or we could be dealing with movement dysfunction or movement about . I mean , there are so many things . But if you're thinking like , is this soreness ? Then you should feel it in the muscles and likely not in the joints .

So muscle soreness is going to improve over time as well as with some gentle movement , and is going to feel worse if you sit still for too long , whereas pain could get worse if you sit still . Could get worse if you move is likely . If there is an injury and it requires rest , then it's going to start feeling better .

If you're resting , you may need ice , you may need heat and again , I'm saying , depending on the kind of thing you're experiencing . But with muscle soreness I mean heat sometimes feels good or vibration feels good , but when we're talking about pain . We're talking about inflammation . There are different kinds of things that you may need to address that .

I'm not telling you which ones to use or when to use it , but I'm saying those are the kinds of things that if those help anti-inflammatories like that it may indicate that it's a more in line with a pain problem than a muscle soreness problem . Not saying that anti-inflammatories aren't going to make you feel less sore .

It could depend , and all of that is something that you would need to . I mean , yes , you can make decisions on your own with whatever feels appropriate for you , but remember that if you're experiencing pain that falls out of the range of muscular discomfort or working hard or some like more acute things need to be addressed by a medical professional .

I just think that's important for me to say . If I'm saying it too much , you know what I mean . As you learn your body , you can start to tell whether or not you feel like oh , when I do these three workouts I don't sleep well and I do a lot more walking , I start to feel X , y and Z .

The three modes of intervention I use are these glute exercises , these stretches before I go to bed and some extra sleep and some extra food and that stuff goes away .

That's an example of something that might be we just need to adjust the pieces of the puzzle whereas something that is more intensely painful , something that is more all of a sudden , something that never gets better with X , y or Z , that is going to need something more than a few exercises and you feeling out how you feeling out what to do .

It means seeking some additional help . The more you learn how your body feels at its best and how your body feels when it's tired or stressed or after these kind of workouts , the more you take in all of that information and use it as a way to better understand yourself . Then you know who to turn to , or you know who to ask about who to turn to .

Where do we need to go ? Do we need to go to our general practitioner ? Do we need to see a physical therapist ? Do we need to just work on a few exercises with our trainer or coach ? Do I need to see a massage therapist ? Is that going to be the thing that helps in this situation ?

The more we can understand our body and the more that we can become discerning as it relates to the sensations we're feeling , as well as being able to articulate that to the people that we're seeking help from , the better off we're going to be .

When my clients say , oh , I'm in so much pain , I encourage them to say are you experiencing pain or are you feeling fatigued and soreness ? I know it sounds silly , but it's that kind of distinction that helps us figure out what's going on and saves us a lot of headache and heartache and allows us to train for a long time .

What we're trying to do here is train at a place and this is for most people train at a place that keeps challenging us , that keeps giving us results , but does not injure ourselves . We don't want to injure ourselves , and so that's what we're trying to do .

We're trying to find the minimal effective dose to make that happen , but to make it happen the way , at the speed we want , with the results that we want , without getting hurt . All right , if you have questions about these kind of distinctions or you have some thoughts about some of these concepts , let me know .

I always love to hear , I always love to get your feedback . I have a lot of people listening , also in different fields , and they have their own background that they're bringing . So if you have something to offer , please let me know . I would be happy to chat , join the giveaway and , lastly , thank you .

Go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you next time . Bye .