No Pain No Gain! (Including; Exercising with an auto-immune condition)

Listener Request!

Let's talk about pain or discomfort you might experience when working out. 

Should you work through it? Is it ever good? What about when you're sick - workout or not? In this episode we cover;

• Coming to the gym with an injury
• Auto-immune conditions
• When you’re not well

Injuries

• How injuries occur and types of injuries
• How you can rehabilitate a muscle and make it Stronger by using it
• Movement is GOOD for our bodies
• Movement increases blood flow to an injury helping it to heal
• Physio Exercises - love them or hate them  - do them as often as you can
• If an exercise a physio prescribes seems strange remember it’s about how your body functions, so often a physio exercise may not appear to affect the injured area

Why do we get sore after a workout - what's normal and what's not?

• Soreness is caused by overload creating micro-tears
• Micro-tears are how Strength Training works
• The main cause of micro-tears are eccentric contractions, which is a lowering of the weight where the muscle if lengthening under load
• Stretching helps by lengthening and smooth out the muscle fibres and reduce the soreness

Skeletal Pain - if you feel pain in your bones and joints, stop what you are doing, seek advice from a professional.

Key take-aways;

• IT’S OK TO SLOW DOWN!
• Pain is not the same as discomfort.
• Pain does not validate your workout as a good or beneficial workout (and neither does sweating btw!)

Exercising with an auto-immune condition (E.g. Fibromyalgia, polymyalgia, rhumatoid arthritis)

• When you are living with a life limiting condition, and you want to be living your best life - go and do your exercise.
• The most immediate benefit of exercise is your mental health, so exercise is really beneficial for anyone with an auto-immune condition. 
• Moving your body is how it was designed to work best. 
• If you have an auto-immune condition learn how exercise can make your body feel better, not put it under more stress.

What about exercising when you feel ill?

• Don’t workout when you are not very well!
• There are no benefits of working out if you might be coming down with something
• Once those critical few days are passed, get back to it, move your body, raise your core temp, get the blood flow going