Niggles vs Injuries: Knowing when to push or pause
1/05/2025
Written by Molly Roper
We have all experienced the feeling of sore muscles. You might be familiar with the burning sensation you get in your shoulders during those final few reps of overhead press, or the heavy feeling in your legs when attempting to walk up stairs the day after leg day! But if soreness in your muscles or joints continues, how do you know when it becomes a niggle, or an injury, and when you should maybe do something about it? You might have been told to ‘listen to your body’... but how do you know exactly what you should be listening for?
“I did a workout yesterday and everything hurts!”
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (or DOMS) is the feeling in your muscles the day or 2 after a workout. This is common and perfectly normal - it’s your body responding to the amount of (good) stress you’ve put it through, and it’s adapting. It can occur as feelings of tightness, heaviness, or soreness, and it should generally only last 24-72 hours after exercise. There’s no reason to delay your next workout due to DOMS, in fact it’s more likely to help with your soreness if you get moving. So feel free to continue with your workouts, just be sure to have a good warm up at the start of your next session!
“My knee really hurts in this particular spot”
Whilst DOMS is usually a generalised area of muscles, feeling a ‘niggle’ in a specific area, eg. your knee or your lower back, may require adapting your training to let it settle. This could be as simple as reducing the depth of your squat to alleviate your knee pain during your next 1-2 sessions, and monitoring the sore area after sessions to aim for full recovery and no increased pain in the 24hrs after training.
“I’ve had pain in my shoulder for a week and it’s stopping me sleeping”
Any time a pain is interrupting your sleep or any other general activities, it’s definitely time to pay attention and make some adjustments. It might be that you just need to take a break from any activities that are aggravating that pain, and the longer the pain has been persisting, often the longer it will take to recover. Pushing through these kinds of injuries will often lead to them hanging around for longer, and becoming more of a burden on your daily activities! So it’s best to pay attention early and we would recommend getting it checked out by your physio/osteo/preferred therapist.
There is always something you can do to keep moving - if you need help adjusting your training to work around your niggles or injuries, book in for a session with one of our Personal Trainers and we’ll be able to help you navigate them.
