Hi guys. Michael Ray answered a question I had on instagram live recently about when you could assign a relationship between pain and movement in the gym. The answer I received was basically that you can’t, rather there does seem to be a relationship between pain and exceeding tissue load / volume tolerance.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and while it all makes sense, I still can’t ignore the many instances I’ve seen where modifying technique at least appears to directly reduce pain in some people. Because of this, I came up with the idea that bad technique itself could be considered an increase in tissue load, which indirectly could be the cause of pain in a tissue.
For instance, if a person overextends their wrists when they bench and press, this may not cause acute pain, but certainly it does place more stress on the tissues surrounding the wrist compared to pressing with a neutral wrist due to the increased moment arm, correct? Let’s say this patient currently has pain in their wrist. Theoretically, either reducing pressing volume without addressing technique, or just teaching the lifter to keep their wrists in neutral would both represent a reduction in tissue loading for the affected tissue. In this context, could we then accurately say that mechanically inefficient exercise technique can cause pain indirectly by increasing tissue load?