If you’ve had an injury, live with an old niggle or experience pain when you exercise, getting back into strength training can feel surprisingly complicated.
Do you need to see a physiotherapist first? Should you avoid the painful area altogether? Is it safe to lift weights? And how do you know whether an exercise is helping you rebuild capacity or simply aggravating the problem?
As a Personal Trainer working with clients in Wynnum and Brisbane’s Bayside, including Hemmant, Manly, Tingalpa, Wakerley, Belmont, Carina and Morningside, this is something I work with regularly.
My approach has also been heavily shaped by my own experience of injury and rehabilitation.
Do You Need Physio Clearance Before Returning to Exercise?
Not necessarily.
If you have already been assessed, understand your injury and have been told that returning to exercise is appropriate, we can often begin by modifying your training around your current capacity.
There are circumstances where further assessment from a physiotherapist, doctor or other appropriate health professional is important, particularly with a new or undiagnosed injury, significant or worsening pain, recent surgery or fracture, neurological symptoms, or anything outside my scope as a Personal Trainer.
But for many people dealing with persistent musculoskeletal pain, there eventually comes a point where more passive treatment isn’t necessarily the answer. Strength has to be rebuilt.
The Way Out of Pain Often Involves Getting Stronger
This is something I had to learn personally.
I spent years attending physiotherapy and trying different approaches to manage my own pain. Eventually, I reached the point where I decided that instead of endlessly trying to “fix” the area, I was going to get stronger.
I wasn’t particularly motivated to do it at the time. But I did it anyway, gradually and consistently, and it changed my life.
The principle is relatively simple: the muscles and joints of your body need enough capacity to handle the forces you ask them to produce every day.
Walking up stairs, getting out of a chair, carrying groceries, lifting something from the ground, training in the gym or simply being on your feet for hours all require force.
If those everyday demands repeatedly exceed the strength and capacity of the muscles and joints involved, symptoms can continue to be provoked.
That doesn’t mean you should simply push through pain or load an injured area heavily. It means the longer-term goal should usually be to progressively increase what your body is capable of tolerating.
How I Work Around Pain or Injury
The first step is finding out what you can currently do.
I look at range of motion, strength and movement patterns, while paying attention to pain and any compensations occurring elsewhere.
From there, we regress the movement to something achievable.
That might mean changing the exercise, decreasing the load, shortening the range of motion, adding additional stability or slowing the movement down so you can control it properly.
As a general guide, I encourage clients to keep discomfort within a mild range and generally not exceed around 3–4/10 pain, provided symptoms remain manageable and the movement is appropriate for the person and their injury. Pain should never simply be ignored, and significant or escalating pain is a reason to reassess what we are doing.
From there, the process is:
Test range → test strength → identify compensations → regress the movement → build capacity → improve control → progressively load the range → progress.
The regression isn’t the destination. It gives us somewhere achievable to start.
Over time, we build the strength, control and capacity required to tolerate more demanding movements.
Real Client Example: Rebuilding Strength Around Pain
Recently I started training a lady who had been struggling with extreme pain in her legs, knees, burning in her feet and frozen shoulder. Moving around, going up and down stairs, even walking has been painful for her for a long time. Within a couple of weeks of targeted, gentle strengthening exercises, core and pressure management awareness and some simple lifestyle strategies, here is what she has to say:
Individual results will vary. Pain, injury history, health status and response to exercise are unique to each person, and the improvements experienced by this client should not be taken as a guarantee of similar results. Training should always be tailored to your current capacity, symptoms and individual circumstances, and medical or allied health assessment may be appropriate where required.
Strength Training Is Part of a Bigger Picture
Other lifestyle factors absolutely matter.
Getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, eating adequately, managing stress and giving your body enough recovery can all support the rehabilitation process.
But these things cannot replace the need to build physical capacity.
If a muscle needs to produce force during everyday movement, at some stage it needs to become strong enough to comfortably produce that force.
The key is targeted strength training that is sensibly regressed, technically sound, achievable and progressively loaded, rather than repeatedly pushing into movements your body isn’t ready for.
For people around Wynnum, Hemmant, Manly, Brisbane Bayside, Tingalpa, Wakerley, Belmont, Carina and Morningside, this is a major focus of the way I approach Personal Training and individualised strength programming.
If pain or an old injury has been holding you back from feeling strong and capable again, book a discovery call to discuss where you’re at and whether my approach is the right fit for you.