Changing Exercises for Pain Management

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
1

Hi docs,

I just watched Austin’s YouTube video on managing pain in the gym (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwj5ORPmX0) after experiencing some knee pain from leg pressing and I was curious as to why changing the exercise is the last step in the process. Why not just do an exercise that you can train at a higher intensity with less pain? I would love to hear your input.

Thanks!

2

  1. An exercise that you can train at much higher intensity with less pain is likely to be far less specific to the painful area. We’d prefer to engage the painful activity in a tolerable way/dose rather than immediately avoid it. We would prefer not to develop an automatic learned response of immediately avoiding a painful movement

  2. Psychological attachment to absolute loading among lifters seems to be a hindrance to successful rehabilitation, in our experience.

I’m sure there are more reasons I could come up with, these are the first few that came to mind. This topic is discussed in much more detail here: Pain in Training: What To Do?