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We have all heard the “No Pain No Gain” slogan applied to fitness, especially flexibility training. The harder you push the better your results… right? Until, of course, you push so hard that something gets strained or torn and then you are out of commission for months doing tiny, boring, PT exercises and regretting your decisions.
How do we know when the sensations we are feeling are productive discomfort vs. damaging pain? Our body is giving us feedback, but do we know how to interpret it? Interpreting sensation is one of the most important skills we can learn as movement enthusiasts.
There is a peaceful passage between the Scylla of under-training and the Charybdis of over-training. This is the zone where we can make steady, measurable gains without the boom and bust of manic effort and exhaustion. It is the zone we want to live in, but it can be surprisingly difficult to stay there.
Last week’s post advocated for a shift in perspective, approaching workouts as a conversation with your body rather than a series of activities done to your body. A conversation is predicated on the ability to understand each other, so knowing how to interpret sensation with some degree of accuracy is essential to this approach.
When Fear Clouds Our Ability to Interpret Sensation
Most of us were never taught how to listen to our bodies.
This was certainly not a skill I learned as a young person studying gymnastics, dance, and martial arts. We quickly learned to ignore pain as a pesky obstacle to our pursuit of excellence.
I have also found myself receiving the opposite advice. In my 20s when I was experiencing chronic pain after a life-threatening surgery, numerous doctors told me to avoid anything that made me uncomfortable lest it make me worse. I spent years in constant paranoia that every twinge and ache was the harbinger of a pain spiral.
Both of these approaches run on fear. Either I am afraid of being a failure because I haven’t tried hard enough, or I am afraid of breaking myself because I have tried too hard. When I am afraid I am not a good listener.
I find that most of my clients vacillate between these two extremes. Either any gesture towards rest or recovery is akin to failure or uncomfortable sensations circle like buzzards, harbingers of doom. Neither mindset makes for an ideal training state.
Good Stretching Pain Vs. Bad Stretching Pain
I do enjoy lurking in the /flexibility subreddit. Sometimes I like to be useful and encouraging, sometimes I like to read what people are working on as inspiration for my own training and coaching. I just enjoy spending time with my fellow flexibility nerds.
I consistently see people posting about issues with pain while training, asking whether or not they should train through the pain, so I know that this is a massive issue for flexibility enthusiasts. I feel that much of this comes from not having a clear idea of what is happening in the body and what could go wrong.
Below is a brief synopsis of what is happening in your body when you are stretching, what you might feel as a result, and what warning signs may signal a danger zone.
To be clear, all sensation is subjective. One person’s wildly unpleasant tearing sensation is another person’s divine lengthening feeling. Our relationship with sensation is profoundly shaped by our history, genetics, and emotional perspective with the current activity (so many interesting studies on how much emotion affects pain. I particularly love this book on neuroplastic pain for anyone with chronic pain issues.)
That said, I do think that there are some general guidelines that can help us determine the difference between productive and damaging pain. It’s a skill that applies to so many aspects of life!
As usual, please don’t take anything that I have to say as medical advice. If you are having issues with pain, please seek professional help.
Why is Stretching Uncomfortable?
The goal of stretching is to increase the available range of motion of a specific joint or joints. There are a number of ways to make this happen by making changes to tissues like muscle and fascia, releasing nerve tension, and/or inspiring neuromuscular recalibration.
Not all of these changes require that we be wildly uncomfortable in the process. In fact, if our limiting factor is nerve tension, we are best served by avoiding anything that will piss off the nerve since they are fussy and do not get better with stimulation. However, much of flexibility training requires some level of discomfort because we are pushing ourselves beyond what is currently easily accessible.
It is common to imagine that all stretching is creating little tears in the muscle and fascia in order to get it to lengthen. It can certainly feel like we are tearing something when we push. But actual changes to muscle and fascia length are only part of what is happening it a stretch.
Much of the discomfort of stretching is actually a result of the battle between the pushing force and your nervous system. We have an ingrained neurological response to stretching called the stretch reflex, which kicks in whenever our nervous system senses that a muscle is lengthening beyond what the nervous system considers to be safe. The muscle will attempt to contract, fighting the stretch, in order to maintain a “safe” length. This intense contraction can feel extremely uncomfortable.
When the force acting on the muscle—be it a strap, a coach, or gravity—is greater than the muscle’s ability to resist, the muscle is forced to lengthen. This can create a feeling like it is tearing even if it isn’t actually sustaining damage.
The hope and dream is that over time that nervous system moves its set point so that the stretch reflex doesn’t kick in as soon and lengthening becomes more easeful and comfortable.
Intense sensation can also arise from muscles being forced to shorten past their comfort point. The one thing that muscles like less than being stretched is being compressed. With some positions the limiting factor is more likely to be the shortened muscles than the lengthened muscles—think pinchy hip flexors in pike stretch or lower back pain in back bends.
All of these things can be very, very uncomfortable but they are the kind of discomfort that is just part of flexibility training. When we feel them we want to modify as needed to make them manageable so we can stretch consistently and not be miserable.
But not all unpleasant sensations are signs of growth…
When Discomfort in Stretching Becomes the Pain of Injury
While some discomfort is inevitable if you want to increase your flexibility, it can also be a sign that all is not right with the world. The most common causes of injury from stretching are either straining a muscle, tearing a tendon or ligament, or damaging a joint by tearing the labrum or cartilage.
Here are some things you might feel in a damaging stretch:
Muscle strain: This tends to happen because you push too fast or too hard into a stretch. It can be very difficult to know you are about to strain a muscle since the pain doesn’t kick in until too late, but it usually happens when you get wildly ambitious and decide to blow past your body’s “no” and get excited about making big, fast gains. Knowing where the “no” is and treating anything beyond that point with slow, careful, measured progress will reduce the likelihood of a strain. Keep in mind that the stretch reflex is there for a reason, so you need to move your set point slowly to avoid the very thing it is there to prevent.
Damaging a tendon: Our muscles are connected to bones via tendons. These structures are all part of the vast network of fascia that runs through our entire body, and they are particularly vulnerable to over-stretching injuries. In that war between the push and the muscle, sometimes it is the tendon that is the victim. Again it is important to move slowly and thoughtfully into a stretch and to notice how your body is responding. If the muscle is simply not giving in to your persuasion, pushing harder can cause injury both acute and chronic.
Damaging a Ligament: Ligaments are fascial structures that connect bones to other bones. They are susceptible to tearing when too much pressure is put on the joint itself, as happens when pushing deep into a split. A deep passive stretch where you are trying to relax as much as possible poses the most risk to ligaments because there are no muscles holding the joint together and the bones can start to separate. Avoid joint pressure and notice if your stretching discomfort is happening in or close to the joint itself to protect your valuable ligaments. Ligament laxity from chronic over-stretching can also cause long-term joint instability.
Tearing the Joint Lining: Our joints are lined with a smooth, linoleum-like surface that allows the bones to glide as they articulate. This surface, the labrum, can be torn by having the bones grind together. You are most likely to experience this in a ball and socket joint like the shoulder or hip when you are stretching with poor alignment causing the bones to pinch together. It is often something that starts small and gets worse over time. Again, deep passive stretching puts you at higher risk because it is harder to hold the proper alignment to protect the joint. If you experience pain in the joint, especially if the pain continues after you are done stretching, it’s time to back off and investigate.
Nerve Pain: Our nerves run through our bodies like old-fashioned phone cords. They are coiled and elastic, but only to a point, and they absolutely hate to be stretched beyond their tolerance. The most frequent cause of nerve pain is when a nerve is being pinched somewhere, resulting in sharp electric, burning, or zapping pain. This type of pain always needs to be avoided and respected and if it shows up on the regular, get some professional help. Don’t mess with your nerves.
Muscle Spasms and Chronic Tightness: Ironically, one of the unpleasant effects of over-stretching can be more tightness. I see this most often in folks on the hypermobile spectrum but it can happen to anyone. We start with a muscle that is tight due to instability in the body and we decide to go after it with a concerted stretch regimen. The stretching increases the instability, leading to even more tightness that can spread and cause muscle spasms and pain. This is the reason I’m so pedantic about constantly doing stability and active mobility exercises in concert with any passive static stretching. You know this is an issue when your stretching only yields results for a short while and then everything becomes monstrously tight again, and the muscles you stretch feel like steel cables. I recently wrote a post about my experience with hip tightness and how much stability work helped my flexibility.
Learning your body’s language, interpreting sensation and finding that safe passage between Scylla and Charybdis, is a lifelong endeavor. Just when you think you have yourself figured out, your body will change and give you new surprises. But the skill of listening and responding does improve the more that you do it.
The benefits of engaging in an ongoing conversation with your body and leaving behind fear-based training permeate through so much more than just working out. I can say from experience that I have learned to trust myself, and I have seen others have the same experience.
The trust and comfort is a benefit that far outlasts splits and backbends.
Next week I’m going to get into some less subjective tools to avoid over-training that I’ve learned from the world of professional sports, where ample resources and high stakes generate excellent tools. Let’s port some of that good stuff over to the physical arts!
Happy Bendings,
Kristina
Want to go deeper?
Further reading:
Working Out is a Conversation With Your Body — Not a Set Formula — last week's post, essential context for this one
What Finally Got My Hip Flexors to Relax After Years of Stretching — a real example of productive vs damaging discomfort
It's Not Your Age, It's Your Nervous System — understanding the nervous system's role in sensation
Does Passive Static Stretching Work? — the science of what stretching actually does to the body
Joint Instability: 7 Signs You Might Not Expect — relevant for anyone experiencing joint pain while stretching
Want to work on this in person?
The Body & Vibe Over 45 retreat is filling up — and learning to interpret sensation and train with intelligence is right at the heart of what we'll be doing together in Oaxaca this November.
For women and femme-aligned folks over 45 who refuse to let age and societal BS write the story of what their body can do.
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