Dealing with pain

Know when to push through and when to seek help

No Pain. No Gain. While this expression can motivate athletes to push past a mental roadblock, it’s not always easy or the right answer.

Whether you are trying to win a marathon or playing on a recreation league team, as an athlete, pain is something you assume you’re going to have to live with, but you don’t.

When an athlete experiences pain, we often see a progression from denial to anger, and then to hope when we are able to help decrease pain by changing a few movement patterns. As coaches and clinicians, we want to help athletes understand their pain so we can address the root issue and alleviate it.

Understanding pain is the first step in overcoming it. Pain is an electrochemical signal that, when sent to the brain, indicates that something is different. The brain then has to interpret that signal to create a response.

Think about getting a piece of popcorn stuck in your tooth. That small little kernel can be so annoying and seem so painful. How can such a little thing overwhelm all thought? Our brain interprets it as a threat that needs to be dealt with, so it devotes a large amount of space, or neurons until the threat is eliminated.

Now imagine you have knee pain from being active non-stop for weeks. Your brain continuously devotes those neurons to the threat, but then you’re told to either ignore and keep going or rest it for two weeks. In either case, you have not done anything to eliminate the threat, so how is it going to get better?

There will be times when rest is appropriate and times when you’ll have to temporarily live with pain, but you also need to work towards eliminating the threat or the root cause of that pain so you can eventually be pain-free. In general, with no treatment, muscles take about two to four weeks to heal, ligaments about four to six weeks, and bones generally heal at four weeks.

There are many interventions that can be done during those healing weeks to lessen the pain and ensure

that function is completely back to normal once the structure is fully healed. Interventions can also focus on addressing the threat and why the structure was damaged in the first place.

To do this you may need to develop a team around yourself - including various professionals such as doctors, physical therapists, athletic trainers, and coaches - all working together to help you in your recovery process. Be honest with these people as you partner with them to work toward wellness and eliminating that threat of “popcorn stuck in your teeth.”

Nick VanBogelen (CSCS, AT, ATC, PN1) currently works with student-athletes to enhance their athletic performance and reduce their risk of injury at the ORS Performance Training Center in Leslie, 517-878-6180.