Dealing with Typical Aches and Pains

Dealing with Those Typical Aches and Pains
By Bernard L. Gladieux Jr.

There are few regular runners and weekend warriors who are not familiar with soft tissue aches and pains. Sore muscles seem to go with the territory, if you are a runner or even the occasional exerciser. They are one of the realities of being human.

Although they are often nagging and unpleasant, these discomforts are an important part of your internal regulating system. They should neither be ignored nor should they dominate you life. According to Dr. Harvey B. Simon, M.D., author of , “The Athlete Within”, soft tissue injuries of the muscles, tendons and ligaments seldom result in long term disability and don’t even usually cause an interruption in running or exercising.

For most people who exercise with these garden variety aches, the trick is to manage them so that they don’t get out of hand and become so painful and debilitating that they prevent you from continuing with your exercise program.

Here are some typical aches and pains that a lot of people will identify with and some thoughts on ways of dealing with them that have a minimum of hassle:

• Fatigue. After a quality workout the dull, achy tiredness you feel in the muscles you worked is usually a good sign. If you’ve stressed the tissues, and if you give them a chance to recover, you will get the training effect you worked for in a week or two. If you still feel the same, achy sensations one, two or more days afterwards, you are still recovering. Don’t expect to be able to put in another quality workout until you can do it clearly, without undue struggle.
  
  
  If you are lucky enough to have access to massage, it can do wonders to ease and, perhaps to speed the recovery process – no light-as-a-feather, superficial routine. Find someone who can do deep tissue work that will manipulate the big skeletal muscles. Myotherapy is the purest of these techniques, but an increasing number of massage therapists understand and are trained in it or a similar modality.
  
  
• Strain. You are struggling up a steep hill on a cross country run or come slapping down a mountain and suddenly you feel a sharp, disabling pain in your thigh or calf. You can hobble for a while, and manage to get back, but by the time you are cooled down, it’s tightened up, and you realize you’ve been nailed by fate, right in one of your important muscles. The first thing you have got to do is ice it down. Hold ice on it. Rub it in with a cube. Sit out the rest of the day with an ice pack on it. Keep the spot up in the air or elevate it if you can and rest it. Take aspirin or another good anti inflammatory (skip the Tylenol). Take the maximum dosage and keep it up so that you get enough in your system to do the job.
  
  
• Bruising. Generally speaking, people with high density muscles tend not to bruise but accidents will happen and a fall that impacts on a key muscle can do damage to anyone. Ice, elevation and rest, again will shorten and minimize the pain of recovering.
  
  
• Inflammation. Tendinitis, Fasciitis, “Tennis Elbow”, Ileo Tibial Band Syndrome, etc. These are some of the nastiest and most intractable problems that runners and walkers have to contend with. They sometimes sound and look like arthritic conditions that seem to affect the bearing surfaces of the joints themselves. Don’t fool around with them. They often take a long time to develop; and they almost always take longer to resolve.
  
  
  If you develop a serious tendonous injury, treat it with every one of the techniques mentioned above, and ease back in only after all symptoms have really quieted down. Don’t kid yourself and go back early. It won’t work.
  
  
• Trigger Point pain. Not all medical authorities completely agree on what Trigger Points actually are. But if you have pressed on a muscle in, say your back or neck or shoulder, and have found an exquisitely tender spot, you have what is most likely a Trigger Point. Chances are that you have them lying deep in big muscles all over your body. Sometimes you are not aware that they are there until they are somehow stressed and “fire” causing the entire muscle to contract, and to become very painful. Such is the stuff that classic back spasms are made of.

With these chronic sources of muscle pain, deep muscle compression seems to work well, especially under the hands of a trained practitioner of Myotherapy. Ice, relaxation, rest and eventually a determined program of stretching and strengthening can train the muscles to remain supple, loose and out of spasm.

Dealing with soft tissue pain should start at the simplest, most conservative level of rest, ice, compression and elevation. When the problem won’t resolve that way, you need to consider more radical approaches, maybe including some over the counter anti inflammatory drugs.

But in the final analysis and as always, preventing the development of muscle aches and pains is by far the safest and sanest course. Eat nutritionally wholesome foods, drink plenty of water, rest and listen for those signals from the universe within.