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- Avoid stress to heal your injury
Over the past 5 years, 1,000s of people have come to me wanting to get rid of their symptoms.
The one thing I’ve had to convince every person:
Your body needs to be stressed to get stronger.
Motion is medicine.
It reduces inflammation, decreases the pain signal, and improves blood flow.
Exercise and daily movement are the best treatments for joint pain.
The key to recovery is discovering the right amount of stress.
Use pain to guide your actions.
Pain is data, not damage.
If it hurts while you’re walking, take a break.
If it hurts while you’re sitting, get up.
If it hurts with exercise, use a lighter weight, fewer reps, less volume, or a different exercise.
My best advice for choosing the right exercise for your injury:
Embrace discomfort and be cautious with pain.
But if you’re like me.
You’re willing to trade short-term discomfort for long-term benefits.
You don’t want the quick fix; you want the truth.
If you adopt this perspective,
I don’t promise people a pain-free life.
But I do promise progress.
Strategically stress your joints to build resilience:
-Move more often
-Invest in your sleep
-Focus on form when you exercise
-Strengthen the muscles above and below the joint
-Don’t overdo activity (so you can break the injury cycle)
Hope this helps,
Tyler Van Acker, Doctor of PT
PS
This is the 2nd of the 5 Joint Pain Myths.
In case you missed it, you can read the first Myth here:
The people with the strongest joints are those who have an active lifestyle.
In next week’s email, I’ll show you what sitting is doing to your body (and how to reduce the effects).