Pain during weight training can be either “good” or bad depending on how your body is feeling. Many mistakes are made thinking that soreness from training is actually a severe injury, but is actually the “good” pain being mentioned.
The best way to know is to have a good understanding of your body. However, it’s never a bad reason to see a doctor if you feel it’s bad pain.
Let’s take a look into pain during weight training, and help you understand what you should do when this occurs.
What is “Good” Pain During Weight Training?
It sounds a bit odd, but there is a difference between pain that is experienced during training. Athletes and those used to weight training do not see what is to be discussed as pain, but if not experienced you may not understand what is taking place while you train.
Muscle soreness and burning sensations during your workout are the two common pains experienced. These are normal and going to occur at some point, especially if new to working out.
Muscle soreness can be felt a few hours after training up to 48-72 hours even. This is called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS for short. The simple way to look at this is from the name, which tells you the muscle soreness is delayed (after a workout).
The reason this occurs is because while you workout, you are tearing your muscle fibers microscopically. These tears cause inflammation in the muscle region, and as they heal stiffness and pain during movement may be experienced.
Technically the muscles are injured, but in a controlled manner that is desired. These tears will recover through protein synthesis, which repairs the damaged tissue allowing them to grow back stronger and denser. Little by little this process allows the muscles to become larger.
A burning sensation is the other common “pain” felt during weight training. This takes place when lactic acid builds up in your muscles. This is just natural byproducts deriving from your muscles when they are exerted.
This will go away after the exercise is completed, and at times this can be a sign muscles are too fatigued for the day if not capable of doing another set even after a rest period.
What is Bad Pain During Weight Training?
Bad pain is felt immediately during training and can be in the form of varying intensities. The following types of bad pain during weight training would cause reasons for alarm:
• Pain in an area from previous surgery or injury
• Sharp pain-causing inability to move any part of the body
• Pain followed by swelling, pressure, or bruising
• Pain that causes fever, nausea, chills, and even vomiting
• Any pain that persists several days later or is reoccurring
You can see that the bad pain is pretty severe in the nature of intensity being felt, and is more obvious when they are sharp pains.
Bad pain is often the result of stress on the muscles either to sudden, or over a duration of using muscles too often. Sudden stress is often when the weight is too heavy, bad form occurs, or when you haven’t used muscles and suddenly train intensely.
Stress over duration could be too many sets being performed, lack of nutrients from diet, or the need for a warm-up prior to training. Stiff muscles hinder joint range of motion and can result in an injury waiting to happen.
What to Do When Feeling Pain During Weight Training
Anytime you believe it is bad pain, you should stop what you are doing and assess the situation. Make sure you are in a safe area away from moving objects, and any weight used is no longer being held.
If the pain subsides, it could be muscle cramps or spasms causing the pain or lack of movement for different body parts. If this is the case, myofascial release may assist with recovering and being able to cautiously proceed with training.
Myofascial release assists with applying mechanical pressure to an area experiencing spasms and cramps. This works by bringing blood flow to the muscle fibers and decreasing muscle tension by signaling your body.
This can be accomplished by using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, and other various muscle release tools. You will experience momentary relief, but an hour or more later slight pain may come back.
Joint pains are different. Foam rollers are not intended for joints, and if the pain is experienced here take time to let the area rest and consider an over the counter anti-inflammatory if needed. Consult a physician if the pain continues.
Warm-Up Tips to Assist with Minor Pains and Soreness
A warm up helps you improve mobility and flexibility prior to training, which may help prevent injury from occurring and improve performance. The phases to a warm-up are cardio, mobility, and dynamic stretching.
Cardio does not refer to intense training for calorie burning. Instead, you only jog or cycle for 5 minutes max. The intent is to get your heart rate and internal body temperature up, which prepares muscles for movement.
During the mobility phase, you use the myofascial release technique discussed. This helps with mobility because the common reason for poor joint movement is tense/stiff muscles. You help your muscles get blood flow and relieve the tension.
The dynamic stretching phase is utilizing stretches that create movement as opposed to holding a body part in place. This is the recommended way to stretch for flexibility before training. Static stretches are utilized after a workout to signal muscles to relax and rest.
The Bottom Line for Pain During Weight Training
You will most likely know when the pain being felt is bad. Sharp pain is so intense it causes you to stop everything you are doing, while soreness is very minor and more of a nuisance than legitimate pain. Sometimes it honestly happens where so pain may be felt due to arthritis and injuries being rehabilitated.
People just have to push through this to experience the benefits strength training has to offer, and over time most notice the pain is no longer there or minor compared to previous pains felt. In the end listen to your body, and if pain noticed is a concern for you, simply contact your physician or visit the office.