By Lisa Snow
Personal Trainer in New York City

Living with Chronic Pain?

Have you had chronic pain for 2 years?  5 years?  10 years?  Do you feel unable to exercise?  Is the pain interfering with your regular daily activities?  Working with a trainer experienced in corrective exercise can help.  Corrective exercise can improve strength, balance, and mobility.  Exercise by itself does not make the pain go away. For pain relief or pain management, your best bet is actual medical treatment (such as visits to a physiatrist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, or pain management doctor) plus prescription medication when truly necessary.  So why bother exercising with a trainer if it isn’t going to stop the pain?  Corrective exercise can help by:

• Slowing, stopping, or sometimes even reversing the progression of muscle atrophy near an injured area
• Reducing your risk of falls by improving your balance, spatial awareness, and core stability
• Helping you regain fundamental movement patterns you may have lost, such as standing up from a chair without pushing on the handles, standing up from the floor unassisted, reaching overhead, squatting and lunging without aggravating the pain in your knees, being able to tie your own shoes or cut your own toenails, and so on
• Maintaining bone density to reduce the risk of osteoporosis
• Aiding in weight loss to take pressure off already overworked joints
• Increasing strength and endurance in the abs, obliques, transverse abdominis, and other muscles that stabilize the spine