Fall 2016 Draft 3

ARTICLE
Pain and
Your Brain
>>> Justin Feldman, DPT
Feldman Physical Therapy & Performance
There is something great about running—the idea of not needing
any equipment; the ease of access to the sport; the enjoyment
of being outside, alone with your thoughts—that just
makes it an amazing sport.
There is also something about running that makes it addictive
and sometimes leads to overdoing it a bit, like putting in too
many miles or training through a minor injury, ache, or pain,
that often makes us, as runners, prone to a little bit of pain. Ask
anyone who runs regularly how he or she is doing, and the
person will often catalog a litany of minor aches and pains,
then say, “But other than that, great!”
As a physical therapist, I often see people when that pain has
become a bigger problem and is getting in the way of their
training. They have tried every YouTube exercise, dipped into
ice baths and hot tubs, read every back issue of Runner’s
World, and scoured all the running blogs for a cure. Then they
try the “other” stuff—like Tylenol, Advil, and Aleve; sometimes
even stronger prescriptions—and when none of them
work, in a last-ditch effort they end up in our office crying,
“Help!” Well, I’m here to educate some of my friends in the
running community about that dreaded pain.
system check of your whole body to see how everything feels
before you start your run. For me, this means doing one or two
Turkish get-ups on each side and walking around. As I do this, I
take note of how everything feels, and if anything doesn’t feel
quite right, I spend a few minutes addressing it. The idea is that
by addressing these things before running, my brain, and yours,
will feel less threatened as you run.
Moral of the story? The next
time you have pain,
remember that your
brain is worried
and trying to
look out for
you. So give
it some
reassurance,
and you’ll
enjoy your
next run
much more.
When people experience pain, the first thing they should
realize is that the pain they feel is a signal from their brain that
something in the area that hurts is being asked to do more than
it can handle, or—and this is the important part—possibly
more than their brain thinks it can handle.
When your brain is feeling threatened and scared by pain, the
first step in stopping the ache is to put your brain at ease. There
are a few easy ways to do this, the first one being to remove the
stress of training by simply going for a fun run with friends, no
technology allowed. That’s right, leave your Garmin, iPhone,
Android, iPod, drone—anything you run with other than
clothes and shoes—at home. Don’t worry if there isn’t a digital
record of your run; it still happened, and you still get credit.
The next step is to drop out all of those pain medications. Not
only do they mask symptoms and sometimes make your brain
more fearful, but some of them will also weaken your tendons,
making them more prone to various issues. Instead, create a
pre-run routine that gets your brain running and provides a
THE MID-HUDSON ROAD RUNNER