Is this soreness or injury?
How to tell if the pain you are having is just regular soreness or an injury.
As a runner, there is a good chance you have had to ask yourself “is this normal soreness, or is this something worse?”
Chances are good you are sore RIGHT NOW as you are reading this.
It can be difficult to differentiate between regular training-related soreness and an injury. Here are a few things to help you tell the difference.
1) Pain location: muscle vs tendon vs joint
Soreness should be located in the muscle belly. Pain located at the tendon or in the joint is a sign that you have pushed it too far and you may need to back off before making things worse.
2) Pain onset: Are you hurting during training or afterwards? how quickly does the pain happen?
Pain from soreness takes some time to come on after training. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) can take 12-36 hours to come on and can last a few days.
Pain from an injury often comes on immediately following trauma, or even during activity.
Many runners describe a ‘hot spot’ that happens with running and goes away after you have warmed up. This is a sign that you need to be more intentional with your warm-up, and you may be increasing your risk of injury by ignoring it.
3) Pain quality: sharp or dull?
Soreness should feel like a dull ache or fatigue. It should not feel like a sharp or shooting pain. Other symptoms like tingling or weakness are the signs of other types of injuries and should be taken seriously.
4) Modifying factors
What can you do to make your symptoms better? With soreness, you should feel better when you rest, but often the achiness is not totally gone. With an injury, complete rest will often be relieving, but activity will increase the intensity. Some injuries are totally relieved with rest, while others remain pailful at all times.
5) Other Symptoms
Redness? Swelling? Bruising? All of these are signs that your symptoms are related to an injury, not just regular muscle soreness.
Injury is hard to define.
Here is the ultimate rule that I use to determine whether you are injured or just sore:
Does the pain keep you from doing anything that you WANT to do or that you HAVE to do?
If the answer is yes, something needs to change and you need to get your injury assessed.
Soreness is a part of the runners’ journey. Once you have been training for a while, you should be able to tell the difference between your regular soreness and symptoms or pain that is out of the ordinary.
If you are ever concerned about your symptoms or something doesn’t feel ‘quite right’ it is time to get an assessment to make sure it is not something more serious.
don’t get caught in the runner’s injury purgatory.
Too many runners get caught in this cycle.
If you think you might be injured, it is time to get an assessment by a clinician who knows how to work with runners.
Most of the time, getting an assessment early can help keep your injury from getting to the point where you have to take extended time off. It is important to get on top of it early.
Dealing with muscle soreness from running? Here is how to manage it (and it’s not foam rollers and massage guns):
How to manage muscle soreness from running
Author: Dr Mark Murdoch, Chiropractor and Co-Founder at Base Camp Chiropractic and Sports Rehab in Vernon, BC.
Mark Murdoch is a Doctor of Chiropractic with a Master’s Degree in Sports Medicine.
Contact: drmurdoch@basecampclinic.com
Instagram: Base.Camp.Doc