Pain after exercise??

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longtimer

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Joined
Feb 5, 2020
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84
Reason
DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
02/2020
Country
CA
State
AB
Hi - I do yoga (at the easiest and gentlest level) every other day. And I find that even though I've been doing it for 2 years now, I have a lot of tightness and pain in my body the next day. With Fibro I know I should exercise regularly, so I do, but even with rolling and recommended supplements and additional gentle stretching - I have this rebound pain after moving - all the time.

Is this common? I asked on my yoga board if anyone else had this, and only three people with Fibro (out of thousand) responded and said that they never got pain after a session.

Is it just me? Is it my age (62)? Is it something else? Does anyone here have similar reactions to movement?
 
hi longtimer...I can relate to what you're experiencing. I was searching the web for the same answers when i read this post. For me, I experience the most after activity pain when I've gone to far.

What works for me was something a PT suggested;
do something for a short period of time....then rest for the same amount of time..... 20 mins doing, 20 mins resting is what's currently working.
I didn't do that today and am now is so much pain that my body is overriding some heavy hitting indica and sleep seems far away.
Maybe consider trying a different exercise? swimming? I found yoga quite painful myself. I did thai chi for a while.
on good days i dance to music... just keep moving forward
 
Hi @longtimer, firstly I can only empathise with your pain, I know how difficult and frustrating it can be.
However, can I ask how long each session of yoga is for? The reason I ask, is that I too can find even the mildest form of exercise difficult if I do it for too long. I soon worked out that although my body may feel okay, it was also also an activity my brain had to work at, and I sometimes wore myself out concentrating on too much gentle excersise without even realising it! You say you do it every other day. at the gentlest level, and I agree movement is good for fibro, but maybe shorter sessions may help? I agree with @saluna420, where resting inbetween can be helpfuI. I find myself that doing gentle stretches for a few minutes morning and night on my yoga mat works much better for me - but obviously you have to find the right balance for yourself. I think it helps to think in a holistic sense - to treat the health of the whole person - physical, emotional, mental. It seems to work for me, I hope it helps you in some way too.
 
yoga (at the easiest and gentlest level) every other day. only three people with Fibro (out of thousand) responded and said that they never got pain after a session. Is it just me? Is it my age (62)? Is it something else? Does anyone here have similar reactions to movement?
I was searching the web for the same answers when i read this post. For me, I experience the most after activity pain when I've gone to far.
What works for me was something a PT suggested; 20 mins doing, 20 mins resting is what's currently working. Maybe consider trying a different exercise? swimming? I found yoga quite painful myself. I did thai chi for a while. on good days i dance to music... just keep moving forward
Hi saluna420, and welcome 👋 - nice how you found us, registered and posted only three hours after longtimer's fresh post!

Quite a few people post similarly here, no way is it just you, longtimer! Ah, @fimi's also chimed in whilst I was forgetting to finish the post...
It takes about 5-10 minutes to "overdo me", ripping me up, even making me cry for pain, cramping etc. if I do long stretches (yin yoga), slow moves (tai chi/qi gong, even in a fibro clinic) & a neck/back exercise class for people 20 years older than me.

The problems are due to changed body senses and changed knowledge from experience:
1) While we are doing something, the cortisol/adrenaline may stop us from feeling a lot of the pain, plus
2) we are used to pushing thru pain from before fibro (part of its cause?) and the risk of a flare may be small or worth it.
This means we need to learn from our new experiences to sense as well as learn off by heart where our sweet spots, our limits, and our risks are, their range on bad "days" and on good "days" (i.e. hours, situations, when we've already done something or we haven't). How many seconds or minutes we can do something, how much break we need immediately after that, so when we can start again - seconds, minutes, hours or days. Best to avoid anything that kicks in next day, I'd suggest.
So like with anything with/to which we treat ourselves - food, meds, supps,
whilst they all can be triggers, it's a matter of finding out our very own dosage at which they aren't a symptom trigger.

Personally I find I can do anything, but only in baby steps = tiny stints (seconds or minutes), or with easement (e.g. tai chi for 2 minutes lying on my back). And increasing that whenever I'm feeling better. But regularly. After 1.5y of cryotherapy with expert acupressure, we'd got my local pains down to zero, and to make sure I tallied 2 to 5 hours of "self-physio" every single day - which includes various kinds of stretching, breathing exercises, relaxation methods, cold showering, on good days a "7 minute scientific workout" or part of it. (Not counting 'sports' like the table tennis I manage 20-50 minutes most days, or cycling.) But "20 minutes doing and 20 minutes" resting is far beyond most of my "self-physio". Most exercises I can do in 20 second stints for about 3 or 5 minutes. Most of them I do while I'm doing other things - typing, waiting, eating....
As I now quickly get any new local problems down and "just" have severe fatigue and Ache, I'm going easy on exercises ("only" an hour a day), but as soon as anything crops up, I clamp down on it immediately. I really need to get my "sports" up further somehow, for general health as well as well as my lipids, but Chinese acupuncture for my severe MCAS flare is having difficulty getting my mobility/energy up from 10% to at the moment around 20%.
 
Hi guys - thank you for your advice and comments. I do 25 minutes of yoga with 5 minutes of meditation at the end followed by more relaxation for about 5 minutes (vagus nerve stuff). I just don't want to lose any of my physical ability - I already feel like I am doing hardly anything anymore. And the practice does have a certain flow to it. I could reduce it to 10 minutes at a time - and do that every day?

So working through the pain isn't recommended? I mean the Fibro is always there... I may be in a long (several months) flare right now - so perhaps that's why its so hard on me. I don't know.

I wonder if I had covid in November/December and if I'm struggling because of that. I never got tested. I just told my husband last night that I feel like I've aged rapidly in the last 6 months.... It is hard to breathe and I am working on that now - reading a book on Breathing and trying to be more conscious of how I breathe.
 
I could reduce it to 10 minutes at a time - and do that every day? So working through the pain isn't recommended? I mean the Fibro is always there
How about 5 minutes yoga (+ 5 minutes meditation, 5 minutes vagus?) every two hours, increasing to every hour?

The art is finding the amount you can do without increasing the Fibro, thus decreasing it.
So if you increase pain that stops when you stop the exercises: That's the pain you can definitely work thru. That's what's actually meant by the phrase.
It's also OK if you have slightly increased pain for the hour after the yoga and/or slightly sore muscles the next day, but both agreeable. I used to love getting sore muscles after exercise and the other day I got something similar, with no further problem.
The problem the phrase "working through the pain" isn't moderated / qualified in any way like this.
And letting pain build up will cause really big flares, whilst not exercising does also, so finding the balance is the way.

So coming back to your original question: If the tightness and rebound pain after exercise is tolerable for you, you feel pretty 'well' with it, and it doesn't exacerbate your other pains, you needn't be afraid of it, and it will in the mid-term decrease your other pains.
 
Yes, @longtimer maybe reducing the yoga session could be helpful. I know it can be difficult finding the balance, but sometimes we don't realize that other things we do (which are not classed as exercise), are still stretching the muscles. Housework is a prime example, all that reaching and bending. This on top of even gentle excersise can all take its toll! I hope you find what works for you.
 
I don't do yoga (probably should) but when I stand or walk for 15/20 mins my hips hurt. I did 5000 steps sat morning and was still in pain the next day. No matter how much walking I do, I never seems to get any better. So I feel your pain.
 
my hips hurt ..... 5000 steps
Hi Penny - have you sorted out what this might be? Whether docs can say anything or not, youtube might help... (hip exercises /stretches / acupressure).
Wow, 5000 sounds a lot! Never counted, don't have a step counter, how many minutes is that? On the best of days I can manage an hour, but usually only 20-40 minutes, only slow, best with breaks, and legs up in between, before, after....
 
After having collected about 100 good videos mainly by reputable docs on fibro and pain last week,
I'm now watching "The Challenge of Disordered Sleep" - Dr. Lucinda Bateman (2009/2011), and in the last section on fitness, she says (at 1°03') "The rule of exercise in my book is: Never have payback the next day." and answering further questions goes on to explain why and how. I've never read it confirmed, so I doubt it really is confirmed, but she says they'd been doing research that only in CFS and FM, not in controls or MS, there were increased levels of things indicating damage / injury, like cytokines, autonomic / pain / fatigue receptors. And before she says that if healthy people suddenly stop doing exercise, they get symptoms similar to CFS & FM. After she says on the FM end it's easier to improve (esp. when pain & sleep can be improved) than on the CFS end. Targeting fatigue (in their case with meds) often worsens sleep - logical, and also my experience; it's finding the balance.
Whatever, all that may help us focus on targetting that fine line.
 
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I feel you @PennyBlacksmith. Hip pain I can relate with. I feel your pain. It’s the worst. I’ve been having an issue where occasionally I take a step and my hip experiences a blindingly sharp pain and it feels like my body won’t hold me up.
On Saturday I walked for less than 40 mins …. While pushing 16 mon old twins in a stroller, each weighs about 23lbs. By Saturday evening I couldn’t move hands legs everything and pain was off the charts. Didn’t feel better till about 4 pm Monday. I hate losing days and sometimes I think it’s worth it but it’s really not. This was the worse it’s ever been when I have overdone so I will remember my limits next time. It’s time to put my health first!
 
@longtimer I'm sorry to hear that you have been feeling uncomfortable after exercise but am very impressed that you have been able to practice yoga. It's a wonderful form of exercise and I hope that you will be able to find a more suitable routine. Unfortunately pain seems common after exercise with fibromyalgia although we need it to avoid deconditioning. It's a difficult balancing act and there's some great advice here on pacing. We have to juggle things between exercise and giving our nervous system time to settle.

For me it's felt like walking on a sprained ankle. It hurts to begin with so you can only do so much, it hurts more after but you have to surely have to walk. Tai Chi is a gentle exercise, I haven't been able to practice as much as I'd like but it is helpful.
 
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