Injury Vs. Pain

Have you ever found yourself wondering if this is just some mild pain or if you have truly injured yourself?

What do you do in this scenario? Do you shut it down and rest? Do you ignore it and hope it goes away?

Case scenario: Last weekend I had a trail race where I fell at mile 13 and hit both knees hard on a rock. I could tell nothing was broken but it still hurt pretty bad to run and I noticed the immediate onset of swelling in my right knee. I still had 7 miles to go but had to make a choice to finish or quit. I took a quick analysis of my pain and symptoms and knew I could keep going. after the race I had a lot of swelling, but I knew that nothing was internally damaged. Using the steps below, I was able to ensure a speedy recovery that allowed me to continue training and even race again this weekend without pain! Check out the process:

Knowing the keys differences between an injury and short term pain problems can make a significant impact on your recovery and whether or not pain develops into an injury.

When you find yourself in this situation you need to follow these 3 steps:

1. Ask the questions like: when did this start, how did it start, what was I doing, and what things seem to make it feel worse?

   • Doing this will usually help you pinpoint the origination of pain and is often times helpful in fixing it as well.

2. Start with form correction and mobility.

   • If this is above your pay grade, source it out to a sports PT like us! We encounter things like you're dealing with on a daily basis. Just shoot us an email.

   • If you can fix the form and pain subsides, good.

   • If you can improver the mobility and pain subsides, good.

   • If not, rest is the next choice.

3. They say time heals all wounds but all know that's a myth. Rest is sometimes a good choice to get things to calm down, but it doesn't usually need to be the only thing we do.

   If we can capitalize on the rest time to include soft tissue work, mobility work, and strength/stability progressions you will help to achieve these outcomes:

   • Swelling reduction

   • Improved bloodflow and circulation

   • Reducing muscle tension, improving muscle activation

   • Breaking down scar tissue

   • Promoting the removal of harmful waste products

   • Most importantly, pain relief!

So how do you decide if what you're experiencing is pain or an injury? If you can address the pain with mobility work, form correction, and soft tissue work and it goes away we can classify it as short term pain.

If we are still experiencing pain despite the efforts, it can be classified as realinjury.

If you are injured or would like to optimize your recovery and improve performance and would like some professional help, book a phone consultation today!

P.S. We also provide sweat testing, running gait analysis, and VO2Max testing, all of which are super helpful in helping you achieve your fitness goals!

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