The Two Rules of Injury Recovery
"How do I know if I'm doing too much, or coming back too soon?"
These are the questions I'm asked the most when I'm helping people recover from injuries, niggles, aches and pains.
Whilst rest is initially important for all injuries, at some point you'll need to reintroduce activity back into your routine. But when, how, and how much, are often the key questions - and can make the difference between successful recovery, or relapse.
Rest alone won't get you back to where you were. Rest allows for the resolution of inflammation, reduction in pain and the start of the repair process. But the controlled introduction of appropriate activity, progressed over a period of time, will stimulate the pace and completeness of repair, not only back to where you were prior to injury, but better still, stronger than before, so injury doesn't reoccur.
So how do you get there, and when to start?
Most people either start exercise too early, or go back too fast into their sport, resulting in a regression back to pain, stiffness and compromised activity. This often occurs when the individual thinks their overall fitness level means they can recover faster from injury than may be so. Others however, wait too long, lacking the confidence to start back at all, so the injury just stagnates. This is where working with a professional can really help guide you, support any confidence wobbles and ensure the introduction of activity is at the appropriate load, pace and with the necessary progressions to suit each individual back to their activity level as smoothly as possible.
My blog 'Sweat vs. Steps: The Difference between Structured Exercise and Functional Movement' explains why rehabilitation exercises are such an important first step. But then you need to bridge the gap between rehab and back to full fitness - and that's where the 'two rules of injury recovery' come in, ensuring you do enough to promote recovery, but not too much so you injure yourself again.
Rule 1: Your pain is allowed to increase slightly whilst exercising, but not more than 25% of your starting pain level. So if your pain is, for example, four out of ten, it's okay if this actually increases as a result of your exercise, to five out of ten. Remember, pain doesn't necessary mean "stop"; it means "listen to me, I'm still recovering". But if your pain increases to more than 25%, you're doing too much and are likely to harm rather than help your recovery. Give it another 24 hours of rest, then return at a lower level, intensity or time, and assess again.
Rule 2: Any appropriate increase in pain (see rule 1), must have resolved back to your pre-exercise pain level within 24 hours of recovery. This means you DO NOT exercise on consecutive days - you must give enough time to listen to the feedback from your body, allow the positive adaptation to occur in that time, and then hopefully, be able to train again the following (third) day. If your pain doesn't resolve back within 24 hours (ie. the day after the exercise), give it another 24 hours, then do the same workout at the same load/level, to see how the body responds.
In summary, if your pain increases up to 25% during, immediately after, or the next morning following the exercise, but resolves after 24 hours of rest, then you're good to go again the next (third) day, and so on.
Think of injury recovery in the same way as getting fitter: you need to push yourself a little bit more, and this may result in short-term discomfort as the body adapts and then gets stronger. This is called 'hormetic change': to get stronger and fitter (which is the same for an injured or fit person), a stimulus or load must be applied to the body, to encourage positive change. The stimulus must be appropriate to the starting level of fitness or injury, and may cause some short-term discomfort, such as DOMS (delayed onset-muscle soreness). But with enough rest after training, the body can a) recover from the stimulus and then b), adapt to a stronger level to accomplish positive improvement.
Both stimulus and rest are needed to achieve positive change. Too heavy or too much of a load, or not enough rest, will result in either injury, or stagnation of injury recovery.
So if you're trying to recover from injury, try using these two rules to guide you back to fitness. Stay positive, and good luck!
Amanda Heading, BSc (Hons), DipION
19/09/2026
Injury treatment, rehab and training plans, nutrition; sports performance nutrition, health maintenance.
