No Pain Equals...No Pain!

[Guest]

by Mike Napierala, PT, SCS, CSCS, FAFS

A concerned parent asked about a daughter who complained of shoulder pain after hours of practicing tennis serves, wondering how much is too much.

Awesome question! One that we all should be asking more often.

Is more really better?  Often we all get caught up in the idea that shear volume will produce a great result. "Just practice more" or "You're just not practicing enough" can become the motto of everyone involved in athletics. 

This topic has lots of different paths that can be taken, but for the sake of the main point to this parent and aspiring tennis player I'd say this.... 

NO PAIN = NO PAIN. 

You don't need to and shouldn't be practicing to the point that your joints are hurting. There is certainly some level of muscle soreness than can come with the intense and long practices that challenge our muscles and tire them out, necessitating some quality rest and recovery time. It's not a crime for your body to be fatigued or to have SOME limited muscle soreness the day after a long session. 

But especially in a repetitive-motion sport like tennis, particularly with something like the powerful ballistic serving motion's known stresses on the rotator cuff and other shoulder structures, it's important to not be dismissive of pain at the shoulder itself. And remember that acceptable soreness that can come after hard training sessions shouldn't be happening every day after every practice.

NO PAIN = NO PAIN.

There's no way an athlete will perform at their best, improve, and really enjoy playing their sport if they're frequently in pain. Something is wrong here and this young tennis player should be seen by a skilled PT to have her range of motion/flexibility, strength, core, etc. checked out with a quality functional assessment to help her figure out why she's getting sore. It's likely got more to do with under-performing areas in her body that are forcing the shoulder to take up too much of the serve stresses than merely just a high volume of hitting.