You tweak your knee. Your shoulder starts nagging. Your back flares up (again). The question comes quickly: should you stop training completely, or push through and hope it settles?
If you’re injured and unsure how much movement is safe, you’re not alone. Millions of Canadians experience injuries each year that limit activity, many related to sport, exercise, or physically demanding work. The good news is that staying active during recovery is often possible and beneficial when it’s done the right way.
At Panorama Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic in Surrey BC, we help people keep moving while healing, without turning a manageable injury into a long-term problem. The key isn’t doing more or less, it’s loading your body intelligently.
Why Complete Rest Usually Slows Recovery
Rest has a place early on, especially when pain is high. But long periods of complete rest often create new problems rather than fixing the original injury.
When movement stops altogether:
- Muscles weaken quickly
- Tendons lose load tolerance
- Joints stiffen
- The nervous system becomes more sensitive to pain
This is why many people feel worse when they return to activity after weeks of avoiding movement. Physiotherapy focuses on controlled, progressive loading rather than shutdown. The goal is to keep the injured area moving within safe limits while maintaining strength and fitness everywhere else.
How to Tell If Training Is Helping or Hurting
Pain during exercise doesn’t automatically mean you’re causing damage. What matters more is how your body responds afterward. Physiotherapists often use a simple 24-hour response rule.
Signs the load is likely appropriate:
- Mild discomfort that settles within 24 hours
- No increase in swelling
- Movement feeling easier over time
Signs you may be doing too much:
- Sharp or worsening pain
- Symptoms that escalate the next day
- Loss of strength or range of motion
Understanding this difference removes a lot of fear and guesswork from training while injured.
How to Train Around an Injury Safely
In most cases, you don’t need to stop exercising, you need to modify how you load your body. Rather than eliminating movement entirely, adjustments often involve changing weight, speed, range of motion, or total volume.
For example, knee pain doesn’t always mean no squats. It may mean squatting to a comfortable depth, slowing the tempo, or reducing total reps while strength is rebuilt. Training around an injury also means continuing to work areas that aren’t injured. A sore shoulder doesn’t mean skipping leg training; a back flare-up doesn’t mean abandoning upper-body strength.
Keeping the rest of your body strong helps:
- Maintain overall fitness
- Improve circulation to aid healing
- Support a smoother return to full activity
Why Isometric Exercises Are Often Helpful Early On
Isometric exercises involve contracting a muscle without moving the joint. They’re especially useful when pain is sensitive to motion. Used correctly, isometrics can:
- Reduce pain (often providing an analgesic effect)
- Maintain muscle activation
- Improve tendon load tolerance
Examples include wall sits for knee pain, static shoulder rotations for rotator cuff irritation, or calf holds for Achilles symptoms.
Injuries That Often Improve With Continued Movement
Many common injuries respond better to guided activity than prolonged rest, including:
- Low back pain
- Tendon injuries (Achilles or patellar tendinopathy)
- Shoulder impingement
- Runner’s knee (Patellofemoral pain)
- Mild muscle strains
Research consistently shows that progressive loading leads to better outcomes than avoidance, as long as the exercises match the stage of healing.
Why Professional Guidance Makes a Difference
Online workouts and social media advice can’t account for your specific diagnosis, pain triggers, training background, or recovery timeline.
A physiotherapist assesses how you move, identifies why the injury developed, and builds a plan that keeps you active without feeding the problem. At Panorama Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic in Surrey BC, treatment is based on evidence-informed loading strategies, clear education, and your personal goals—not generic restrictions.
When You Should Pause and Get Checked
While movement is often helpful, there are times when you should seek professional assessment. Book an appointment if:
- Pain is worsening week to week
- You feel instability, catching, or giving way
- Night pain is increasing
- You are unsure which movements are safe
Early guidance often shortens recovery and prevents chronic issues.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to choose between staying active and healing properly. With the right approach, movement becomes part of recovery, not the obstacle.
If you’re injured and unsure how to train safely, the team at Panorama Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic can help you modify what’s needed, keep what’s working, and return stronger.