Don’t Continue Lifting Through Injuries

August 12th, 2007 by Paul Johnson

This may sound like an obvious title, but often when the music and adrenaline is pumping, you may not feel like stopping your workout when you feel very slight pain during lifting. Not all injuries are equal, you can pull or strain a muscle slightly without causing a severe injury. This might cause you to shrug it off and maybe continue lifting.

It’s better to stop your workout and let it heal, than to make it worse. If you feel something funny or painful during your lift, stop your workout immediately. Depending on how bad it felt, you may want to take off a week or 2 from lifting with that muscle. Even if you don’t feel pain when you move it afterwards, your body does not lie. If you felt a slight pain or numbness in one of your muscles during the lift, then something is wrong. Weight training, when using proper form, is very safe. It’s hard to get a severe injury during weight training, unless you neglected a smaller injury by excercising through it.

Jeff Anliker, LMT on October 10th, 2007

Good article! It is important to listen to your body. I always recommend that if you feel pain WHILE performing a movement that you either stop or only move through the range of motion that is comfortable. Post exercise fatigue and soreness are ok, but completely different than pain during movements. It is just as important that those suffering from an injury don’t take too much time off either as once a muscle is injured, it never returns to pre-injury strength levels until it is rehabilitated with appropriate corrective exercises.
Admin on October 11th, 2007

Thanks for your input Jeff, it was well said.