ARE YOU INJURED OR ARE YOU JUST SORE?

Whether you have been exercising for most of your life or have just started, you have likely at one time or another asked yourself the question “Am I injured or am I just sore?” This self evaluation can be important for how you decide to proceed with your training program, but it can also be harmful if not put in check.

Let’s first define our terms.  

Injury is defined by Merriam Webster as being “an act that damages or hurts”. While vague, it seems the scientific community doesn’t have a clear definition either. At Headquarters Physical Therapy, we define injury as “the experience of pain or directly related tissue alteration that results in a subsequent loss of normalized function for a sustained period of time”. While we won’t go down the rabbit hole of what pain is specifically for this article, we do acknowledge and respect the fact pain is multifactorial, individualized, and can manifest in varying intensities and even become chronic separate from any tissue damage.

Soreness is defined by Merriam Webster as “causing emotional pain or distress; physically tender (as from overuse or injury), feeling or affected by pain”. Aside from the emotional part of the definition, there seems to be a lot of carry over regarding the two definitions for injury and soreness specifically as it relates to potentially creating a pain experience. We would define soreness as a sensation felt as a direct result from training that tends to last for a short period of time (less than 2-7 days) and does not affect overall function in the long term. 

With both of our definitions for injury and soreness, we include a time component which will be important to consider. 

Injuries that involve direct and immediate damage to tissue structure will likely result in a significant loss in function and are often traumatic or immediate. A common example is landing awkwardly on a curb while running and spraining your ankle. One minute you can run, putting anywhere between 6x your body weight through your leg, and the next you are limping and can barely put any weight on your foot. The change in function is drastic and in this case almost instantaneous. 

Injuries can also occur from an accumulated amount of activity that the individual is unable to recover from. Take the same runner for example. Let's say instead of spraining their ankle, they decide to significantly increase their mileage one week to the next to “make up for not running as much the week before”. With this spike in training volume, this individual experiences symptoms into the shin and ankle that over the next few weeks drastically increases. Where now, the runner can only get through 1 mile before needing to stop when before they could easily knock out 5 miles. The injury was persistent and limiting the runners overall function.

Where does soreness fit into these two possible injury scenarios? Soreness will dissipate in intensity over time and not affect one's ability to train long term. To keep things simple, the day following any type of training, feeling some general soreness or muscle tenderness or mild discomfort in any one joint when performing a movement when the day prior you felt fine would be a normal response to training. This should be regarded as a positive thing and as long as training volumes and intensities are properly managed the soreness level will likely decrease as you build more load tolerance in your tissues. 

So what should you do moving forward?

Injuries are sometimes glaringly obvious (think spraining your ankle) but sometimes injuries can be less obvious (think more overuse). It’s ok that there is also some gray area when it comes to assessing yourself for what might be going on.

If you take anything away from this, remember that training should be fun! Soreness is inevitable, especially if you have just changed your program or are getting back into it after a long time off. Trust the process and allow a few days for soreness in any one area to reduce before thinking something is seriously wrong.

 If for whatever reason you are concerned that you might have an injury affecting your performance or ability to progress your training, we would love to hear from you! Feel free to give us a call and request to speak with one of our Doctors of Physical Therapy and we will be sure to address your specific needs.