Today I want to explain why exercise hurts and I’m not talking sore muscles from a great workout
I’m talking that lower back, the knee pain, the shooting pain down your legs and dull achy, sore hips.
You might be a runner or into high impact, high energy workouts or you might be hitting the weights doing exercises like Dead-Lift and Squats.
It’s frustrating because your working out, your being healthy your doing your thing but after a great session you need 2 to 3 days of rest for that pain to go away.
Or even worse you just think – fuck it! I’m going to workout, and the end result is, it’s much worse, you feel it all day, carrying a dull ache around with you you will end up doing yourself an injury if you continue training this way.
You don’t know whats causing it. It doesn’t make sense and, it’s starting to have an effect on your performance when you do workout. You start missing out the moves that you know aggravate the pain, restricting movements and exercises to work around the pain.
In the end if this carries on you will be wondering if it’s even worth the effort of working out. You will hang up your gym shoes and be done with it.
BUT…
There is a way…
I am going to share with you today the worst kept secret that none of us care about.. STRETCHING!
We don’t care about it because it’s boring and we think it’s not that much of big deal, you might spend some time in the steam room or think that the walk back to work will be enough.
Do you know that this chronic pain you are experiencing is because your muscles are tight, overworked, under stretched. No stretching means less mobility - less able to get into those correct positions without compromising good form.
If you you are shouting out in frustration that you do you damn stretches then I have to ask - are you engaged, focused and paying attention to your stretching technique? Do you stretch on the borderline of pain and hold your stretching positions for an adequate amount of time or do you usually half ass it because you have places to be and you can cool down on the way back to work (insert many excuses here). THIS IS NOT STRETCHING.
Here are 3 things you should start incorporating into your workout regime right now.
Warm up – focus on opening the hips plus glute and core activation. This is your prep work before you work out. It’s not a myth that warm muscles = better performance. Focusing on engaging the muscles warms them up nicely ready for a great workout.
Stretch – Stretching after a workout is honestly the most important piece, it doesn’t have to go on for ages but it does have to be a proper, effective stretch. Focus on main stretches like hips, glutes and hamstrings. If you spent 60s on each stretch, that's only 6 minutes and is a bargain trade off to be able to live life pain and injury free.
I have two super useful videos here to show you my own warm up and stretch routine that I use with my clients.
WARM UP - Engage and Activate
Stretch Vid for Cool Down - Sore Hips, Back and Sciatica relief in just 3 moves!
Found this useful? Tell me about it -check out my blog for Tight Ankles and Calves.