Can Personal Training Decrease Chronic Pain?
If you have chronic pain, exercise may help you moderate your symptoms, but you should not start working out without guidance. Getting help with your workouts ensures you safely engage in activity to get the most benefits and avoid hurting yourself. This guide will help you learn whether working out with chronic pain could be a good option for you and how to make the most of it.
How Does Exercising Help Decrease Chronic Pain?
Studies have shown that regular exercise may help improve quality of life, reduce pain severity and increase physical functioning. Similarly, starting a workout routine should not cause an increase in pain outside of normal muscle soreness following activity.
Chronic pain can reduce the activity you do in your daily life. When you move less, your muscles can deteriorate and weaken, making movement even harder. Exercising can help prevent your body from degrading from a lack of use. Workouts can strengthen your muscles and improve flexibility, both of which can make doing things in your life easier while helping you to stay mobile and active.
If you have gained weight from inactivity, adding exercises back into your life may help you to lose weight. Removing the excessive weight can lessen the strain on your joints and muscles, which may help ease some of your pain. Additionally, the brain's release of endorphins from a good workout naturally relieves pain without medications.
How to Start Working Out With Chronic Pain
If you want to incorporate exercise for chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis or another long-term condition, you must use caution. Jumping into intense activity, especially if you have been inactive, increases your chances of injury.
You'll need guidance and clearance from a medical professional before you begin working out. Once you get approval, start slow and build up your stamina and strength.
Get an Evaluation From a Doctor or Physical Therapist
If you have been inactive and want to start exercising with your chronic pain, talk to your doctor or a physical therapist first. You need an examination to determine if you are healthy enough to start a workout program. Once you get the green light, find basic, simple movements that gently bring activity back into your life.
Start With Basic Movements
When you start incorporating physical movements and exercise back into your life, be sure to start with the basics — these could include alternating between sitting and standing, stepping up and down onto a box, pushing, pulling or rotational movements. Practicing stability and balance could also help.
By doing these basic movements, you will slowly increase your ability and range of motion to prepare your body for more intense workouts.
Why People With Chronic Pain Should Always Work Out With a Personal Trainer
If you have chronic pain, you must have someone to guide you throughout the process. A personal trainer will demonstrate, guide and instruct you through exercises and stretches to help you reach your goals while ensuring you do the movements safely.
Your body will naturally want to overcompensate for your pain by changing how you move. A trainer will watch for these types of movements that can reduce the effectiveness of your workout or cause injuries. Personal trainers will help achieve several benefits, including:
Stronger Muscles
Pain reduces the strength you have in aching muscles, and exercising may help you gain muscle tone. A study showed that in patients with chronic pain, the painful limb's muscles were 20 to 30 percent weaker compared to the less painful limb.
Increased Flexibility
Flexibility is important when you have chronic pain. When you implement and regularly perform a system of gentle stretching movements to improve your flexibility, your muscle ligaments and tendons become less tense. And when performed properly, strength training movements help increase mobility and range of motion which leads to a better ability to build lean muscle.
Great flexibility in your muscles increases your range of motion, which can increase the number of things you do. Therefore, preventing limitations in your regular activities can improve your quality of your life.
Safety
Your safety is paramount. When you have a personal trainer for chronic pain, they will help you move correctly and maintain proper posture and correct positioning/alignment so you don't worsen your pain condition.
If you do exercises alone, you may do too much when you have a day with lower pain levels. Over-doing your workout can cause more pain the following day. You could even cause an injury that could contribute even more to your chronic pain.
Education
Personal trainers help you learn specific pain relief exercises that will help your condition. They have an extensive understanding of how the body moves and which workouts will help you reach your specific goals.
Expert trainers can also help you learn the ideal routine for what you want to do. As you improve your stamina, strength and flexibility, your workout needs will evolve. For example, if you want to shift your focus from losing weight with chronic back pain to increasing flexibility, a personal trainer can help modify your workout routine to help you reach your new goals.
Motivation
Staying motivated, especially if you live with regular pain, can be challenging. Personal trainers help you focus on your goals and give you the positive feedback you need when things get tough. With the help of a trainer, you can set an exercise routine and stick with it. Through regular praise and guidance, personal trainers make your workouts more rewarding.
You'll also be less inclined to miss your regular exercise routine if you have someone waiting at the studio for you. If you have a set appointment with a personal trainer, it will be more difficult to skip your workout for the day.