Do any of the following sound familiar?:

“I used to spring out of bed in the morning, now it takes me 10 minutes to be able to stand straight.”

“I haven’t done anything differently, I just worked at the computer all weekend. Why does my neck keep ‘going out’?”

“I was running 30km a week easy before my 3-week summer break. How can I have knee pain on my second week getting back into it?”

The above are universally common statements and questions we have been faced with as physiotherapists in Australia and our time working in Singapore.

If you have ever experienced an injury or musculoskeletal pain, someone close to you or even your own inner voice would have probably uttered the phrase ‘it’s probably old age’. Despite some measures in strength, balance and muscle fibre type that decrease with age (more pronounced after 50), the changes are so gradual that there must be other reasons for your body sending you these pain or stiffness signals. *

An Example for Spinal Pain:

In some scenario’s where someone has had progressively increasing episodes of spinal flare up or spasms there are often multiple causes. Maybe you work longer hours sitting in a more stressful role, your drive to work is longer, you exercise once a week which sometimes pushes out to once a fortnight when there is too much on, you might have put on about 4 kilo’s in the last 5 years, and maybe you’re not sleeping as well as you used to.

When these things happen in life, the body loses overall conditioning and can cope using compensations, recruiting bigger muscles to do the fatigued muscles’ work and will manage for a while. But there is always a threshold for any system that once reached will signal alarm a.k.a. pain. The pain is trying to tell you something. It’s giving you a firm warning that the body (and brain) are not happy and it is trying it’s best to prevent a more serious injury from occurring so you can keep going.

An Example for Runners and Sportspeople:

Similarly, if you are a regular runner and you’ve had a 3-week break, you haven’t run once, and you’ve enjoyed a few extra drinks and nice food on holiday. When going back to running with a reduced capacity, if you try and run at a similar intensity and distance, then you are at an increased risk of developing a variety of lower limb conditions. The longer you have off from running, the higher the risk. Find out what the recommended minimum maintenance program should include.

The same applies when you are in your regular weekly running program when on the weekend, you run with someone new and they are fitter than you, the speed/intensity is higher than you are used to and you try your best to keep up.

How to Prevent Your Pain

So next time you have a pain similar to the above think to yourself, or maybe write down 5 factors that could be contributing. Even better, if you want to prevent injury you can think of ways to reduce risk of going beyond a threshold. This might include going for a walk every day to prevent postural neck pain or keeping up some running on holiday and building up gradually to the previous load when you get back into it.

These are the golden factors that we try and uncover when consulting with our clients. Together, we come up with modifications & interventions that address the real reasons holding you back and increase your body’s capacity to handle load.

References:

* Keller & Engelhardt, 2013: Strength & muscle mass loss with ageing process. Age & strength loss (Muscles Ligaments & Tendons Journal)