Injury & chronic pain
Training around an injury — without stopping.
A bad back, a shoulder that catches, a knee that complains on stairs. Most people respond by stopping, waiting to feel better, and losing months. There's usually a version of training you can do today — it just has to be built by someone who knows what to change.
First, the boundary — because it matters.
Hammer Fitness is a personal training gym, not a clinic. We don't diagnose, treat or rehabilitate injuries, and nothing here is medical advice. If you have an undiagnosed problem, acute pain, or symptoms like numbness, tingling or weakness, see a physician or physiotherapist first. What we do is build training around a condition someone qualified has already assessed.
The usual mistake
"Rest until it feels better" often makes it worse
Complete rest is right for a genuinely acute injury, for a defined period, on clinical advice. For persistent aches and old injuries that never fully resolved, indefinite rest tends to work against you.
- Tissue detrains fast. Muscle, tendon and bone all adapt to being loaded. Remove the load for months and they get less tolerant, not more — so the thing that hurt at 20 kg now hurts at 12.
- You compensate elsewhere. Avoid a movement long enough and the body reroutes around it. That reorganisation is usually what turns one sore joint into two.
- Everything else declines with it. Cardiovascular fitness, strength, body composition and sleep all deteriorate while you wait — and each of those makes pain harder to tolerate.
- Fear settles in. The longer you avoid a movement, the more threatening it becomes. That's a real, documented obstacle and it takes graded exposure to undo.
The useful question is almost never "should I train or rest." It's what can be loaded today, how much, and in what position.
What changes
How the programme gets built differently
Working around a limitation isn't doing the normal programme more gently. Different variables move.
Where the load lands
Changing a joint angle, a seat height or a grip changes the moment arm — and therefore which tissue takes the demand. Often a movement that hurts in one position is completely comfortable in another that trains the same muscle. That's the first thing we look for, and it's the difference between a machine set up properly and set up approximately. The mechanics are explained here.
Working the part that's fine
Discomfort is usually concentrated in a portion of a range rather than all of it. Restricting to the tolerable range keeps a muscle training while the irritated position is left alone — and that range typically expands over the following weeks.
Same muscle, different tool
There is more than one way to load every muscle. If a barbell movement is off the table, a machine with a different resistance profile frequently isn't. Having a wide equipment selection matters more here than anywhere else.
Slower, and monitored
Load increases in smaller steps, and we watch how you respond over the following 24 to 48 hours rather than only during the set. Pain that settles quickly and pain that lingers mean different things and get different responses.
You tell us, every set
None of this works if you push through quietly. Your feedback during the session is the primary input, which is one reason this is difficult to do well in a class or on an app.
Common situations
What we see most
The most common by far
Usually desk-related, often years old, frequently flared by a movement chosen badly rather than by loading itself. Position and range are typically where the fix lives.
Pinching and catching
Overhead and bench-pattern movements are the usual triggers. Changing the path and the grip often removes the symptom entirely while training the same muscle.
Stairs, squats, standing up
Loading through a partial range and building tolerance from there is generally more productive than avoiding leg training, which is what most people do instead.
None of that is a protocol, and we're not offering one. Two people with "lower back pain" can need opposite things. It's an illustration of the approach, not a prescription — and if what you have hasn't been assessed by a clinician, that's the first appointment to book, not this one.
Who coaches this
Coaching from the other side of it
Keyvan Billou came to this work through his own back injury. A former competitive soccer captain and a top-of-class Kinesiology graduate, he found his focus in pain management and injury prevention after his own training was derailed — which is a different kind of understanding from having read about it.
He coaches alongside the rest of the team under the same method, and clients working around a limitation are frequently matched to him. You can meet the full team on our coaches page.
The wider reason we're set up for this: a private appointment-only floor means nobody is waiting on the machine you need to spend ten minutes adjusting, and a curated equipment collection means there's almost always another way to load a muscle when the obvious one is off the table.
See a clinician first if any of this applies
- The pain came on suddenly or followed a specific incident
- You have numbness, tingling, pins and needles, or weakness
- Pain wakes you at night or is present at rest
- There's visible swelling, or a joint gives way
- It hasn't been looked at by a physician or physiotherapist
We'd tell you the same thing on the call. Coaching works best alongside proper care, not instead of it — and we're glad to work with what your clinician has recommended.
Questions
Common questions
Can I train with an injury?
Frequently yes, once a clinician has assessed it. Complete rest suits genuinely acute injuries for a defined period, but for persistent aches and old injuries, prolonged rest tends to reduce tissue tolerance and lets everything else decline too. The useful question is what can be loaded today, how much, and in what position.
Do you treat injuries or offer rehab?
No. Hammer Fitness is a personal training gym, not a clinic. We do not diagnose, treat or rehabilitate. We build training programmes around a condition that a physician or physiotherapist has already assessed, and we are happy to work alongside their recommendations.
Should I see a physiotherapist first?
If your problem is undiagnosed, came on suddenly, involves numbness, tingling or weakness, wakes you at night, or involves swelling or a joint giving way, then yes — see a physician or physiotherapist before training. Coaching complements proper care rather than replacing it.
Can you work with my physiotherapist's plan?
Yes, and that is the ideal arrangement. If you have exercises, restrictions or a return-to-activity plan from a clinician, bring them to the consultation and we will build the training programme to sit alongside them.
What if a movement hurts during a session?
You tell your coach immediately and it gets changed. Position, range, load or exercise selection are all adjustable in the moment. Training through pain quietly is the one thing that makes this approach fail.
I have chronic back pain. Can strength training help?
Many people with persistent back pain train productively when the programme is built around what they tolerate rather than around a standard template. Position and range are usually where the difference lies. What is right for you depends on what your clinician has found, which is why an assessment comes first.
Will you just give me easier workouts?
No. Working around a limitation is not the same as training gently. Load stays as high as you can tolerate safely, because load is what builds tissue tolerance. What changes is position, range, exercise selection and how quickly we progress.
Get Started
Tell us what's going on.
Bring what your clinician has told you and we'll be honest about whether coaching is the right next step — including if the answer is that you should see someone else first.
This page is general information about training, not medical advice. Hammer Fitness is a personal training facility and does not diagnose, treat or rehabilitate injuries. Always consult a physician or physiotherapist before beginning exercise with an injury or persistent pain, and follow the restrictions they set.
