Pain when you exercise?

It is natural for the body to keep a painful area still to protect it. This applies in particular to acute injuries. For ailments that come on gradually or are present over time, the opposite is usually the case: the condition improves with activity and gets worse if you keep the area quiet. In addition, muscles and joints become stiffer and the muscles weaker and less persistent already after a couple of weeks of rest.

Exercises when you are in pain?

Exercises are something you like to do to improve a function that has been reduced due to pain. Because the area is already stiff and painful, exercises can also be experienced as painful and perhaps a little threatening. Here are three pieces of advice you can follow if you're not sure how much pain you can tolerate during the exercise:

1. Do the exercise without "cheating". Try to have a normal movement-pattern while doing it.

2. If you get a lot of pain in the evening on the day you trained or have difficulty sleeping because of the pain, you can skip or reduce your effort the next training session.

3. Imagine a pain scale from 0 (no pain at all) to 10 (worst imaginable pain). You can do an exercise even if you get up to 4-5 in pain experience. See scale at the bottom of the page.

The exercises we have selected in this program put little strain on muscles, tendons, joints and ligaments. The main aim is to restore normal mobility in the area and to stimulate the tissue so that it functions more normally. Such exercises rarely cause significant increased pain over time.