When dealing with an injury in the gym and you are working on slowly loading the area of interest/injury, do you always recommend that you choose a weight that causes zero pain? If a patient/lifter can do a certain exercise with zero pain at weight level 1 but it feels super easy and they could easily do 50+ reps, and they can do it at weight level 2 but it causes very mild discomfort (1-2/10) and it is still fairly easy but doing 20+ is at least a challenge, would you stick with the weight that seems too easy and has no pain or advance to the weight that causes just barely noticeable pain and is a slight challenge? Hope that question makes sense and I appreciate your help.
No. I typically set the expectation pain should be tolerable (individualistic) and not leaving the person feeling debilitated but this is case dependent.