Know Your Pain: Good vs Bad Pain

painscale

I often tell my classes that it’s okay to work through good pain (my muscle feels tired and sore doing these squats), but no one should work through bad pain (my join hurts or my tendon feels like there is glass in it when I do that exercise).

The problem is, sometimes the difference between good pain and bad pain is slight or hard to determine. If you are someone who lives with pain, movement might hurt in what seems like a bad way every time you move, but you’ve got to move.  If you are an athlete or avid runner, you might push through acceptable pain so often then when you feel actual bad pain you push through it to the point of injury.

So how do you know the difference?

In my role as a Pilates Instructor, I always want people to leave feeling better than when they walked in the studio. I never want people to leave in pain, feeling like they hurt something.  That is not the goal of movement.  But research has shown that in almost all cases it’s better to move through pain.  If you have a surgery, […]