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Home > The FITSPRO Podcast > 040 | How Clients Can Address + Work With Pain During A Lift


	Podcast:		The FITSPRO Podcast
	Episode:		040 \| How Clients Can Address + Work With Pain During A Lift
	Category:		Health
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2019-10-08 01:00:21
	Description:		TEACHING CLIENTS TO ADJUST WHEN FEELING PAIN Episode 40 came about after my experience at the Prehab 101 Seminar with Dr. Jacob Harden in Victoria B.C. Canada in September. If you're in the fitness space and don't follow him, I highly suggest you find him on the gram @dr.jacob.harden. And if you need CEU's for the NSCA or other organizations, his Prehab 101 course is approved - which is amazing. Today’s episode addresses something has likely happened to everyone listening. If you lift weights, you have definitely had this happen on some level. You’re working out and you experience pain. That’s it. You’re following your program as planned and you feel in a pinch in your shoulder or twinge in your back. So, what do you do? Go home? Move on to the next exercise? Modify? Push through the pain? That, my friend, is what I am teaching you today. This is not a gold standard, biblical approach or one size fits all system. But, it is what I do with my clients and is in line with what I have learned from professionals whom I hold in high regard. So, here I am, sharing it with you. Question 1: is the pain above a 5? I work with my clients on a pain scale from 1-10. It doesn’t start at 0 because 0 is no pain. Now, 1 is barely any pain. Below 5 is tolerable. 10 is the worst pain you can imagine - think child birth without meds. So, if a client’s pain is below a 5 (meaning it is tolerable), I am totally fine with them working through the lift. If the pain exceeds a 5, they have some regressive options. Option 1 is to reduce the load. Client reduces the load. Then one of two things happens. Either client's pain decreases or it doesn’t. Based on that, they either complete sets at that weight, where pain is 5 or below (tolerable pain) or, if the pain didn’t go away, I’ll sometimes have them decrease again until we find a tolerable load. BUT, we must also keep in mind that there is a goal of the movement we were doing, right? So if the goal was to work at an intensity of 85% effort on RDLs, heavily loading the hamstrings, but the client can only tolerate a load at 50% effort...then we enter waters where I alter tempo and maybe even exercise selection, which we’ll get into as well. Soooo. We altered load by decreasing it. Pain is tolerable, finish workout as planned, make record of weight and pain. Lowered weight and pain didn’t change, now we use option 2. And option 2 is decreasing the range of motion. Can we do RDLs from a shorter range of motion with tolerable pain? Yes? Great, work at that range of motion with a tolerable load. Record pain level and load. No? The pain stays the same, above a 5? Then we change exercise selection. That’s on the client if they have a comprehensive understanding of WHAT the given exercise was meant to do. I personally work with a lot of other professionals in the field so they may be able to make this adjustment themselves. If it’s a 1:1 client, then we make that change together. My 1:1 and Built By Annie clients would be noting this in the True Coach. Which you can try via my link here. Now, I ask 4 other determining questions of a client who has pain Does the pain dissipate between sets? Does the pain get better with movement?Does the pain dissipate after the workout is complete? If so, when? If not, what is the pain score post liftIs the pain present the next day? If so, what level? I don’t have this is a flow chart yet for clients, but plan to make one so they have a helpful visual. I am a fan of empowering the client. And I also lean more toward pain as a sense, or a perception. It does not mean stop all movement. If we can educate clients around their pain and help them feel safe, they are more likely to continue training and enjoy it. That is not to say we are negligent and ignore pain. Not at all. But let’s not let it run our workouts or limit us in areas it doesn’t need to.
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