Everyone who trains gets niggles. The skill is telling the ordinary ones from the ones that matter, and the rule I use in the gym is a traffic light.
Section
Green: train through it
Muscle soreness a day or two after a session, especially in the first fortnight or after a new movement. It is dull, it is on both sides, it eases as you warm up and it is gone in two or three days. This is normal. Move, walk, eat, sleep and come to the next session; the warm-up will sort most of it.
Amber: train around it
A sore spot that is only on one side, that is there before the session as well as after, or that a particular movement makes worse. Tell me before we start, not after. Nearly everything can be trained around: a sore shoulder does not stop your legs, a sore knee does not stop your pulling and pressing. I swap the movement, cut the range or drop the load, and you keep the habit going. What you do not do is push through a sharp, one-sided pain because the rest of the class is doing the exercise.
Red: stop and get it looked at
- Sharp pain that came on suddenly during a movement.
- Swelling, heat, or a joint that will not take your weight.
- Pins and needles, numbness or pain running down an arm or leg.
- Pain that wakes you at night or has not improved after two weeks of easing off.
- Chest pain, dizziness or breathlessness out of proportion to the effort. Stop immediately and get medical help.
For those, see a physio or your GP first, and tell me what they said. In Scotland, NHS 24 on 111 is there when the surgery is shut. I am a coach, not a physio.
What I do when you come back
You do not restart from zero. We go back to the version of the movement you can do without pain, add load slowly, and build up over the following weeks. Most people are back in the gym within days; it is the person who stays away for three months waiting to be perfect who loses the most. The bad-back guide shows what that looks like for the most common one.
The two things that prevent most of it
A proper warm-up, which is why every session here starts with one, and not adding load faster than your technique earns it. Sore for a day is training. Sore for a fortnight is a message.