July 10, 2026
You're going to experience pain or injury at some point.
The idea that we can go whole lives without incurring any episode of pain or injury is a myth.
For instance, prevalence of musculoskeletal pain presentations tend to be greater in non-exercising people than exercising people over the course of a year. [2]
In addition, while most forms of structured exercise have very low prevalences of injury, they are never non-zero.
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I don't mean to sound overly grim with this statement, because most of these situations will resolve themselves on their own.
For example, for plantar fasciitis, there are plenty of conservative treatments that can relieve pain in the short term, but no treatment is that much better than doing nothing for it over the long term (~6-8+ months). [1]
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It's just true that pain is going to occur at some point. Even if you do everything right.
Thus, the right mindset is not to act as though we can prevent it fully, but rather to know what steps to take when it does occur.
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So, let's say that a given exercise is giving you trouble.
Maybe you noticeably tweaked something one day, or maybe something just gets aggravated every time you do the exercise.
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What most people do is write off the exercise; thinking it's just not for them.
In my view this is a mistake, and can lead to unforeseen consequences down the road.
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Note: This is not health/medical/rehab advice. This is being written for education purposes only.
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Let's revisit a topic you've probably seen me write about plenty here before.
For any exercise, there is a dose that:
Is too little to cause any stress or adaptation
Just right, sufficient stress to promote adaptation, injury risk remains low
Too much, excess stress, adaptation may still occur but with increased injury risk
This is true of running, lifting, or anything else.
P.S. Go here for more details on this topic specifically
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Pain neuroscience can be a ridiculously convoluted field.
Broadly speaking, though, most people's musculoskeletal pain will come from two broad sources:
An actual injury, condition, or irritation of some bodily structure or tissue
A mis-calibration of pain signals within your body [3]
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True injuries, when they occur from training specifically, are often the result of spending too much time in that third category of load management. [4]
In other words, the stimulus placed on your bodily tissues exceeds their physical capacity; resulting in failure of the tissue in some way.
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That second point, a mis-calibration of pain signals within your body, is commonly considered the most common cause of chronic pain.
Basically, here's what happens:
Some type of tissue damage occurs
A signal is sent to your brain that this tissue damage occurred
The brain then perceives this as pain, therefore making you less likely to re-injure the area
Under normal conditions, as the injury heals the signal sent to the brain decreases accordingly.
Sometimes, this circuitry goes haywire, and the signal sent to the brain remains despite the injury healing.
It's sort of like a light switch where the lights stay on no matter which way you set the light switch.
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Depending on the specific situation, there are all sorts of complex protocols you can use to manage and move on from pain & injury.
Before you get to these, though, there's a common first step that's worthwhile trying whether the pain you're feeling is from a true injury or if it is from malfunctioning pain signaling.
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The first step is:
Take whatever movement is causing you trouble, and regress the exercise until it does not cause pain or discomfort.
Then, progress the exercise not based off of your fitness but instead based off of how your pain changes over time.
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If your pain is coming from some sort of true damage, then this approach applies a targeted mechanical stimulus to that damaged structure at a dose it can tolerate.
This mechanical stimulus promotes reconstruction and healing of the structure, and over time you can progress the exercise as the structure heals.
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If your pain is coming from malfunctioning pain signals, then this approach seeks to "re-calibrate" those signals to be more accurate.
You're basically telling your brain that it's okay to move in a certain way, the pain signal will be modified a little bit, and you just work this up and up over time.
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A key idea to this approach is this:
If an exercise is causing you some sort of pain, then what you've identified is the most specific exercise you can use to treat that pain.
Most people end up avoiding such exercises, but nothing else you do is going to be as targeted for the discomfort than the exercise in question.
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With all that said, how should you actually go about regressing an exercise to make it more tolerable?
For lifting, there are 3 primary strategies for your consideration:
Decrease the load (weight)
Decrease the reps
Decrease the range of motion
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Decreasing the load (weight) or decreasing the reps you do is the best strategy when pain only comes on at certain intensities of exercise.
For example: let's say doing set of 8 reps of romanian deadlifts with 185 pounds aggravates your low back; and let's say this set is an intense set (e.g. you get close to failure).
After some experimentation, you identify that a set of 185 pounds for 4 reps feels okay and a set of 135 pounds for 8 reps also feels okay.
Spend some time at this dosage, build it up gradually, and you'll soon be back to doing your normal sets without discomfort.
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Decreasing the range of motion is the best strategy when discomfort isn't caused by weight or reps but by how deep into a movement you go.
Let's take the example of deep squats causing pain in the front of your hip.
Experiment with different depths of squatting, and identify how low you can go without pain provocation.
Then, spend some time only squatting to this depth. In this specific example, you can even incorporate pauses at the identified depth for the sake of maintaining training intensity.
Over time, you are likely to find yourself able to go deeper without discomfort.
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For endurance training, your options are to either decrease distance (or duration) or pace of your training.
Both are worth experimenting with, because different pain patterns will respond more favorably to one or the other.
As an example, let's say you can run 5 miles at a 10:00 min/mi pace, with discomfort setting in around 3 miles in.
The first things for you to try could be:
Running 5 miles at a 12:00 pace
Running 2.5 miles at a 10:00 pace
Spend some time at this dose, and gradually build back to where you were. Soon enough you will likely be running unrestricted.
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That's because it is.
Of course, this isn't always going to work. There are plenty of times where something a bit more nuanced and complicated is advisable.
However, I'd venture to say this will work the majority of the time. And it's at least worth trying before you spend a bunch of time and/or money on something else that may not be needed.
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