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Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Conor O’Donovan, DPT — a physical therapist in the rehabilitation hospital’s Pain Management Center — shared his expertise about pain and exercise in a recent article by The New York Times, Your Workout Should Hurt. But When is Pain a Red Flag?
The article provides advice about knowing when to seek medical attention for pain after exercise — and when it is safe to push through and keep working out.
For example, in the article, Conor identified a few key signs of a more serious injury — signs that go beyond the usual pain or soreness that can follow exercise. He advises people to watch for a lot of swelling, intense pain or a reduced range of motion.
“A healthy knee, for instance, should bend about 160 degrees,” he said in the article. “But a meniscus injury might cause it to catch a little or perhaps stop around 90 degrees.”
The article also encourages people to track how pain after exercise changes over time. This helps individuals distinguish normal muscle soreness from pain associated with a deeper medical issue.
Conor shared a personal anecdote about a time when he ignored back pain after a soccer game. As it turned out, he had dangerous blood clots and ended up in intensive care. He cautions others to “read the pain cues correctly.”
“If it’s getting progressively worse, something’s going on,” he said.
Finally, The New York Times article concludes with a reminder that movement is important for overall health, and exercise can play a role in treating pain — even chronic pain.
“Your body’s built to move,” said Conor in the story. “It’s healthy to move. And a little bit of increase in pain is OK.”
Exercise Tips & Living with Chronic Pain
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Conor treats patients living with chronic pain in Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Pain Management Center. In a recent Q&A for the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab blog, Understanding & Applying Pain Science in Physical Therapy, he offered further insight about how physical therapy and exercise can help people living with pain.
He shared the following tips:
- Do exercise you enjoy, and don’t stress about the optimal or perfect exercise or form.
- Listen to your body to differentiate chronic pain from other sensations that occur during exercise.
- Try not to compare your current experience with what exercise may have looked like for you previously.
- Start a new exercise regimen slowly.
Read the full Q&A for more tips and to learn about pain science.
About the Pain Management Center
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Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Pain Management Center is one of the only interdisciplinary pain clinics in the country offering a novel, team-based approach in which medical doctors, psychologists, physical therapists and occupational therapists collaborate to help patients with pain. Through “active treatment,” patients participate proactively in a wide variety of therapy sessions, and they learn tools and strategies to better manage pain on their own.
