Exercise and ongoing pain

Exercise is an important part of your pain management. Regular exercise can help improve your general fitness and help you to return to the activities you enjoy or need to do.

Research shows that exercise benefits your health and well-being. You, like many people who have ongoing pain, may have reduced your activity to try to relieve your symptoms. Often movement is reduced or avoided because of concerns of causing re-injury or further damage.

Unfortunately this inactivity leads to stiffness, muscle weakness, low mood and reduced fitness levels. This is known as de-conditioning. In the long term this reduces your ability to perform daily activities and enjoy yourself socially. It can be hard to break out of this vicious circle.

There are many benefits to exercise. Initially exercise may cause an increase in your pain. However if you exercise in a controlled and paced way the potential benefits are well worth the hard work.

You can record your exercise on the ‘My Activity’ tracker on the patient online platform which is available for patients within the Pain Service and you can sign up for here (you will need the access code provided by the Pain Service). You can also do this yourself by setting goals yourself on paper (see section on Goals) ADD LINK

Download our factsheet on Exercise and ongoing pain
Download our factsheet on Managing Activity