After I exercise my pain comes back

When I go to the gym, my pain comes back. I thought exercise was supposed to be good for me?

Exercise is good for you. However, like everything in life, too much of a good thing, turns into a bad thing! Let me explain. Muscles are the brain’s worker bees. They do the grunt work for the body. In order to get stronger, you have to break down the muscles (exercise) forcing the body to put more muscle tissue there. If you have an injury or a compensatory postural change, your brain tells the muscles to contract (work) all the time, to protect the area. So in other words, those muscles never get to rest! If you now go to the gym and make those muscles work even harder, they start “screaming” back at you. It is the body’s way to warning you. If you keep it up, you are going to be sorry! If this is happening to you, you must fix the underlying injury/issue, let it heal, then you can resume exercising that area and get it stronger to help prevent injury down the road. How do you fix it? Get the area adjusted! Once the joint and nerves are doing better, then you can stretch it out, have the muscle tissue massaged and relaxed, and now you are ready to exercise.

Until next time, be happy, healthy, and smart!

Dr. Jim