Here’s how to know whether it’s safe to push through.
It’s 6:15 a.m. and you are five minutes into your first run in weeks. The temperature is perfect and the sun is just emerging, turning the sky into a stained glass masterpiece.
Then you feel a twinge in your knee stepping onto a curb. Was there a click? It aches a little, but not badly. Maybe you’re just rusty — or maybe it’s the beginning of a meniscus tear. Should you push through, or is your workout done?
In an ideal world, you would be able to immediately consult a doctor every time you felt pain during exercise. But in real life, you have to make judgment calls. Most of the time, you can walk it off, suck it up or push through it. But other times, you risk real injury.
Everyone’s perception of pain is different, and doctors are loathe to make sweeping statements that might cause someone to exacerbate an injury. But the choices you make in the moment — or the next day — can be the difference between a temporary nuisance and a persistent problem, said Beth Darnell, an expert in pain psychology at Stanford University and a former ultramarathoner.
“It actually might not have been a big deal, but suddenly we’ve created a big deal because we pushed through an additional five miles,” she said.
So we turned to a few pain and movement experts for tips on what to watch out for the next time your shoulder starts to complain at the gym.