Why "No Pain, No Gain" can harm you
How not to kill your gains
Everyone has probably heard of the phrase “no pain, no gain”. The slogan was commonly known from Jane Fonda, an infamous 1980s exercise personality and actress who emphasized achieving the goal of soreness and exercise intensity as a sign of a successful exercise routine.
There are a few reasons why this phrase, if applied incorrectly can lead to more harm than good.
As a Physical Therapist, I have witnessed many people taking this phrase to heart and applying it to their rehabilitation which has lead to set backs and negative results.
Muscle tissues need just the right encouragement
Now over exercise can range from light muscle strains to severe issues such as muscle tears
Some delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is routine. If you’ve ever done a workout after not having done one for a while, you’ll usually feel severe soreness the next day. Some levels of this is normal and indicate that you’ve had a hard workout but may be discouraging for those who are just starting out.
However, what is more serious is when soreness becomes a muscle strain – this occurs and indicates a level of injury to the muscles. Common examples are biceps (front of the arm), rotator cuff strains (deep in the shoulder) and hamstring strains (back of the leg). Signs of muscle strain includes pain and weakness in the muscle that is strained and movement becomes difficult for periods longer than two consecutive days.
It indicates that there has been either an acute or chronic overuse of the muscle – while this may improve with some rest of the affected region, stretching, ice packs.
More prolonged and severe cases of muscle strains can set you back from exercising for 2 weeks or even up to a month. Working with a strained muscle is often times painful and can even lead to muscle tears leading to further problems.
The Injury Threshold
As seen in the graph below from an article from British Journal of Medicine regarding athletes, this is a representation of training workload (e.g. duration and frequency of how an athletes trains, intensity of exercises). When an athletes “overtrains” going towards the right, red side of the graph, then the likelihood of injury increases.
It’s also interesting to note that people who exercise too little can have an increase in risk of injury. This can be a problem in today’s society where more people are adapting a sedentary life style.
It can lead to the “Weekend Warrior” syndrome where the common desk job worker has little physical activity Monday through Friday and then goes on a 2-3 hour exercise spree. This usually ends up with people in Physical Therapy clinics due to injury as a result of under training.
The sweet spot is the amount of training that mitigates injury risk the most – this of course takes some skill, trial, and figuring out how to optimize their training for best performance while improving recovery rates. My goal is to give you some tips and guidelines of how to start an exercise program safely and ramp up from there.
Even if you are not an elite athlete, your muscles, joints, and nervous system still adapts and responds to exercise, just not at the same level. It is possible for athletes to overtrain and therefore harm their bodies.
Exercise without hurting yourself: start easy and warm-up
So we went over the fact that exercise may be harmful if performed to an excessive extent. We talked about how some level of muscle soreness should be fine but muscle strains and even muscle tears can be detrimental to your progress. It’s going to depend on your fitness level, what your goals are, but in general here are my recommendations:
- Start your exercise program in easy, bite-sized chunks. A couple of pointers are: exercise for 20-30 minutes, 3 times a week.
- If you are starting to run, good place to start for absolute beginners is with a C25K program (couch to 5K program). You might only be running for 5-10 minutes in the first several sessions and then gradually increasing the duration and intensity of exercise later on.
- Perform a light warm up routine – it doesn’t have to be aggressive stretching, research shows that aggressive stretching before exercising can hinder muscle performance. For most exercises try doing a lighter version of the task. For example: If you are running, a proper warm up is to do a short 5 min jog or a brisk walk. When performing weight lifting, start with light weights and build up to your working set.
- Warm up should not be intense or tiresome as you need to reserve your energy for the workout session ahead.
Exercise to lose weight
If your goal is weight loss, I encourage counting calories – it’s arguably easier to cut out eating a 150-calorie chocolate chip cookie which can take 15-20 minutes to burn off depending on the exercise you’re performing.
Find low calorie alternative foods (e.g. lite cheeses vs full fat cheeses, fat free yoghurts vs full fat, sugar free drinks vs regular soft drinks).
I don’t believe in very restrictive diets as it’s possible to lose significant weight in a short time but then gain it back due to the “Yo-Yo” effect. Sustainable weight loss should be enjoyable and occur over a longer time span.
Exercise has been shown to amplify the effects of a proper nutrition plan to accelerate weight loss.
set your self up for success
In our next article, I’ll be taking through an introductory sampler plate for which exercises I recommend for beginners. We’ll be looking at which exercises give you the best bang for your buck and ease of use.
The best form of exercise is the type that you can enjoy and stick with long term.
I’ll also give you 3 tips on how to properly prepare for exercise. Stayed tuned by either bookmarking www.fannypackdoctor.com or following The Fanny Pack Doctor Facebook Page. I link my articles to the page as soon as they are ready!
See a Physical Therapist if you’re dealing with pain issues in daily life or that which limits your exercise routine! Book a session with Luna – a convenient PT service that has the therapist see you at home (available in most major US cities). Click here to get started.