When to Seek Treatment for Workout Pain

Whatever your fitness goals — from squeezing in a workout on your day off to competitive sports — sore muscles or pain with exercise might feel like a hurdle you have to jump on the way to your personal best.

When is it important to listen to discomfort and when can you push it? Learn how to stay safe while crushing your fitness goals.

Body and muscle pains you shouldn’t ignore

Defining the gray area between painful gains and injury requires some reflection on how the pain started, what it feels like, and what happened afterward.

Several symptoms that point toward injury include:

• Sudden, sharp, and lasting pain that happened during an exercise

• Pain that prevents you from doing an exercise or certain movement

• Changes in appearance around the painful area, such as swelling, bruising, or deformity of any kind  

• Numbness, burning, or tingling that spreads to your hands or legs

• Pain in an area of a previously healed injury or at the site of a recent surgery

If something hurts and it limits your function for more than 3 days, consider seeing a doctor.

Certain symptoms may suggest a more serious problem with your health. See a doctor if you have pain that wakes you up at night, or pain accompanied by:

• Chest pain

• Fever 

• Chills

• Sweats

• Vomiting

• Digestive problems 

What should you do if you feel pain while exercising?

We’ve all done it: Strained a muscle, started to feel better, after a few days and headed back to the gym. But if you get back into your workout and you still feel pain with exercise, then you probably haven’t rested enough. 

Pushing through workout pain could take something that wasn’t an injury and can turn it into injury. You might feel like you can’t take more time off, with a major game around the corner or a marathon in a month. But those few extra days of rest might mean the difference between long-term success and being out for the season.

Should you push through sore muscles?

If you wake up feeling stiff and sore, take things one step at a time. Do you feel better after walking around your room? After going for a walk or getting on the bike? You can try some light activity, and your soreness should lessen as you move.

While massages, hot tubs, cold tubs, and stretching can help aid recovery, low-level activity may be most effective at decreasing healthy soreness after exercise.

Are sore muscles a good sign?

Normal muscle soreness starts soon after your workout and may last a few days. Especially if you did something you’ve never done before, it’s not unusual for a few days to pass before you start to feel better.

Muscle soreness after working out means your body’s musculoskeletal system — your bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage and connective tissues — is healing and getting stronger. The musculoskeletal system repairs itself after small traumas so that the next small trauma doesn’t cause the same damage.

This process, similar to building calluses on your hands from lifting weights, allows you to progress to more challenging exercises over time.

Severe muscle pain after workouts

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) describes a debilitating type of soreness that might make you question whether to see a doctor. You don’t typically need to, but try to rest. This type of soreness will only get slightly better with activity.

DOMS develops about 2 days after you’ve exercised too intensely. With DOMS comes extremely painful muscles that feel very different from normal, aching muscle soreness.

The pain, stiffness, and limited function is your body’s protective mechanism. These feelings naturally help prevent your muscles from doing anything that could progress to more serious and potentially life-threatening conditions, such as rhabdomyolysis or compartment syndromes. In the meantime, resting, icing, and taking over-the-counter pain relievers can help.

Wise words for when your body aches after working out

Wherever you are in your fitness journey, workout pain can keep you from moving forward. The most important things you can do to ease pain after a workout and prevent future injury are:

• Check your form: Bad movement patterns, or bad form, can lead to injury.

• Stretch your muscles and joints: When muscles and joints are more mobile, your risk for injury decreases.

• Build rest into your workout plan: Establish cyclical, built-in periods of time when you can let your muscles, bones, or joints recover.

• Listen to your body: Pay attention to what your body is telling you and adjust your movement accordingly. If an exercise hurts, don’t do it. If soreness, discomfort, or pain doesn’t get better with rest and conservative treatment, it’s time to see a doctor.