At one time, a common fitness saying was ‘no pain, no gain.’ This is incredibly inaccurate. Frankly, pain is the body’s warning sign that something is wrong and that there is imminent danger to that area of the body. So if you’re performing an exercise and there’s a lot of pain: STOP.
Exercise is good for helping to reduce pain, however. Think about it, when recovering from a bad injury, the doctor often prescribes physical therapy. Physical therapy is work that helps to rebuild the muscles of an area slowly under the auspices of a professional.
You can use exercise in your daily life to reduce kinks, aches and pains and even menstrual cramps. The last seems a bit hard to believe and when you’re on the first day of a cycle and there’s a great deal of discomfort, the last thing you want to do is exercise. However, performing light stretches can flood oxygen into the muscles around your abdomen and lower back. It can also help relieve some of the tension of the muscles that are contracting.
Remember, cramps are just a contraction of the muscles in the uterus and surrounding areas.
Women who exercise regularly often note a decrease in the amount of cramping they see each month. However, some women do not. It’s a good rule of thumb if you have severe discomfort, go ahead and skip exercise those days. Let your body be the judge of what makes it feel better.
A program of regular exercise can help with arthritis as well. Arthritis affects the joints, making them sore, stiff and often fragile. It’s a deterioration of joint strength. Exercising muscle groups around the affected joints can strengthen the support for those areas. This can help reduce the pain of using the affected areas.
It’s important to remember that before you begin any program of physical fitness with regard to a condition like severe arthritis or osteoarthritis, that you consult with a physician.
Exercise during pregnancy is another great way to help reduce stress on the body that is changing rapidly. Women who continue to exercise throughout their pregnancy can avoid some problems like leg cramping, bloating and pain in the joints. It can also help make labor easier and reduce extreme weight gain.
I didn’t exercise regularly through my pregnancy because I experienced severe physical issues including a dislocated pelvis for several months. As I look forward to planning a second pregnancy, I plan to attempt a better physical regimen. Women who exercised regularly before their pregnancy can usually maintain that exercise level if at a slightly lower pace throughout their pregnancy.
If you didn’t exercise regularly beforehand, start walking as long as you have your doctor’s permission. A daily walk of a mile or so can provide mother and child with a healthy workout. One woman I know who ran regularly before she got pregnant, continued to run throughout her pregnancy. She dropped from 3 miles a day to only a mile a day during the last trimester. She gained only the minimum weight, delivered a very healthy baby and was back to her pre-pregnancy weight within three months of the baby’s birth.
Her case is not unusual and it can happen for all of us, but a lot depends on what our doctors recommend, our physical body types and the type of pregnancy we experience. Exercise is healthy, however and it can help you achieve the ‘glow’ associated with pregnancy.
In March, I am going to focus several articles a week on specific programs for different conditions including exercises for pregnancy, recovering from injury, for sports preparation as well as exercises for people with special conditions like arthritis, rheumatism and physical disability.
Exercise can help reduce pain and increase physical fitness. If you’ve experienced any of the above, I’d love to hear from you. Profiles of personal stories will be available in March as well! Have a great Tuesday!