Am I Injured or Just Sore? Differentiating Injury Pain from Typical Training Pain
As a runner, it can be difficult to decipher if the pain you’re feeling on any given training day is a sign of injury or just normal pain associated with running mileage. When is it best to seek professional help? Or is an extra recovery day all that’s required? These are questions that can be tough to answer even for someone like me who, as a physical therapist and run coach, deals with these questions all the time. After putting in miles and effort over weeks and months it can be challenging to step back and acknowledge when you’re potentially experiencing “injury pain.” Here are a few quick guidelines I give to all of my runners to help them decipher just that. Is this pain something I can continue to run with and monitor or do I need to stop and seek professional help?
Is this pain consistent over multiple runs? If, for example, you get midway through a run and you start to feel knee pain, does that knee pain come back again around the same point of your next session or did it seem isolated to only that first run? Pain that comes back time after time, particularly if it intensifies with activity and doesn’t seem to be impacted significantly by rest, is a red flag that maybe there is an injury process at play.
Would you rate the pain >3/10? If 10 is the worst possible pain imaginable, a 3/10 would be the line where a sensation goes from a discomfort to a real pain. If the discomfort you’re feeling causes you to change your gait, change your facial expression (ie a grimace), or causes you to question whether you should stop due to pain, the answer is probably yes. This is a sign that you should stop and seek help before continuing.
Does the pain last >36 hours? If pain persists for 36 hours or more, this is indicative of an inflammatory cycle (aka injury process) happening where the body is having a hard time recovering without added intervention. This, along with the presence of one or more of the other signs outlined here, should cause you to stop and question whether intervention is required.
Does the pain limit your range of motion or change your movement pattern? If you feel yourself compensating in some way to reduce the pain you’re experiencing while running, this is definitely a sign that you should discontinue your run. Continuing to run through pain that changes your movement patterns can lead to further pain and imbalances and complicate your recovery process. The good news is listening to your body and not pushing through pain often leads to a quicker recovery. It can be so tempting to keep running despite pain, but the more disciplined you can be about following these guidelines, the greater your consistency with running will be.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you most likely need to change something up in your routine, and usually this doesn’t just mean resting. Rest can help reduce pain in the moment but doesn’t address underlying strength imbalances or mechanical issues that are most likely at the root of your pain. Please feel free to reach out to your Thrive Running coaches for additional info. We are running coaches and also physical therapists and are more than happy to help guide you through the ups and downs of your running journey.