Resting Won’t Fix These 5 Common Gym Injuries

Rest is best, right? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Of course there are times where rest can help resolve some muscle soreness, especially if you have been training high volumes with your lifts or if you have significantly increased your mileage with running. We’d also be remiss not to mention proper sleep and recovery.

Still, rest alone isn’t the answer to everything and oftentimes leads people down a path of prolonged recovery and time spent away from doing what they love.

Over the years we have seen this time and again. That’s why we’ve put together this list of five injuries that likely won’t resolve with rest alone, as well as a couple of tips for how to get started resolving them, so that if these issues arise you know exactly what to do to get back to training.

Here are the five injuries that likely will not be resolved with rest alone, along with a couple of tips for how to get started resolving them.

1. Back Pain With Deadlifts

Back pain during deadlifts can come from one of three things (or a combination of all three). These three things are 1) you lack trunk stability, 2) you lack hip extension strength, or 3) you lack hip extension mobility. The combination of these things can cause you to overextend your low back during the lock out instead of extending through your hips at the top. This back-and-forth motion, coupled with a loaded spine, will cause your brain to throw up a red flag and give you a “check engine soon” light known as low back pain.

You’re probably saying, “But what should I work on to turn off that warning light?”

Answer 1: Improve your ability to keep your trunk stable. Think ribs down when lifting.

Answer 2: Work on improving your hip extension mobility and then hit the save button and lock it in by following it up with something like a single leg glute bridge.

2. Hip Pain with Squats

Front-of-hip pinching on the way down usually means there isn’t enough room in the front of the hip to fold, often from posture and mobility limits. Keep “ribs down” through the squat for better pelvis position and depth, and check your hip flexion mobility: bring one knee to your chest lying down, and if that pinches, that’s your answer.

3. Knee Pain with Running

We often find some combination of limited hip mobility, poor hip control, and a hard landing behind knee pain in runners. Work hip mobility and control together to get a fuller stride and take tension off the quad, which crosses the knee, and practice a softer landing: try a few barefoot strides on grass, then carry that same lighter landing pattern back into your shoes.

4. Shoulder Pain With Pull-ups

Pinching at the top of a pull-up usually means the shoulder can’t get fully into position overhead because of a mobility or stability gap, so the arm bone catches under the shoulder blade. Work on overhead shoulder mobility and thoracic spine mobility; a stiff mid-back forces the low back to arch to make up the difference.

5. Shoulder Pain With Pressing

Pain with bench press, push-ups, or overhead pressing is usually a stability problem: the shoulder blade isn’t controlling the load. Practice setting and holding the shoulder blade before and during the lift, especially anything overhead, so you’re pressing off a stable base instead of a loose one.

Ready to get rid of pain and get back to movement and exercise?

Rest and recovery still matter, but they can’t correct a movement pattern that’s the actual problem. If one of these five keeps coming back, that’s worth a proper evaluation instead of more time off.