11 Tips For Working Out When You Have Achy Joints

Warming up at the start of your workout is a good practice for any athlete. A good warmup prepares your body for the activity to come and increases blood flow to your muscles, which can reduce muscle soreness and your chance of injury. And as the Arthritis Foundation notes, warming up before a workout is especially critical if you have joint issues. If you're prone to stiff or sore joints, jumping right into a brisk run or vigorous game of tennis without warming up is asking for trouble.

Your warmup should ideally replicate, in a gentle form, the movements or actions of your main workout. For instance, according to the Mayo Clinic, if your planned workout is a brisk walk, your warmup should include several minutes of slow walking to ease your body into workout mode. For similar reasons, the Arthritis Foundation recommends a variety of dynamic warmup exercises that combine gentle stretches with movement. These can include hip circles (holding one leg out to the side and moving it in small circles while stabilizing yourself against a desk or table), arm circles (holding your arms out to the sides and moving them in increasingly large circles), and gentle lunges and twists to loosen the leg joints and back.

As noted by Harvard Health Publishing, regular exercise is essential for joint health, even for those experiencing joint pain. However, this doesn't mean that you should just resume your pre-injury or pre-arthritis workout routine or take up whatever new workout plan your friends are doing. Instead, you should listen to your body: While working through some mild discomfort may be fine, don't push yourself to the point of acute pain, and beware of exercises that could make your joint condition worse rather than better.

Among the exercises you should avoid if you have joint pain from arthritis are running, high-impact aerobics, and jumping rope — so in general, if an exercise requires you to take both feet off the ground, you should steer clear of it, since its jarring motions can strain all joints in your body (per Mount Sinai). And according to the U.S. News and World Report, even running on a soft surface or a treadmill puts a lot of stress on the joints throughout the body, and should definitely be avoided if you have knee problems. And if your knees are delicate, avoid deep squats, lunges, or other exercises that require deep knee bends.

If you have achy joints, you may have noticed you're not as flexible as you used to be. This is another area in which exercise can be helpful. For people with arthritis in particular, a consistent exercise routine can increase flexibility along with strength and endurance, according to the Mayo Clinic. And in particular, motion exercises specifically aim to improve flexibility in targeted joints.

Harvard Health Publishing recommends a handful of gentle exercises for improving your range of motion. For instance, you can work your shoulders with arm raises: Lying on your back with your arms at your sides, raise each arm slowly over your head, keeping your elbow straight and your arm close to your ear (as if you're doing the first half of a backstroke). Knee raises improve range of motion in your knees and are done from by raising a leg parallel to the floor while seated in a chair, holding it for a few seconds, then slowly lowering it. These exercises can be done safely at home, as long as they're done gently.

Achy joints are typically weak joints, which means the stress and strain of normal movement is often more than they can comfortably handle. But not moving your sore joint at all will only cause it to weaken and stiffen further, according to Harvard Health Publishing – and in any case, you may well find lying in bed all day to be logistically impossible. In short, the key strategy for joint health is use it or lose it — but the key is identifying the right way to strengthen your sore joint without triggering further pain or injury.

A useful strategy is to focus not so much on strengthening your troubled joint as on strengthening the muscles that support it, since when you move the affected limb, these muscles will likely have to do a lot of the heavy lifting that your sore joint can't do. For instance, physical therapist Corinne Croce told Self that she recommends glute activation and hip stability exercises, among others, for those with knee problems. Such exercises will help you take some strain off a sore knee while safely keeping it active.

As noted by Harvard Health Publishing, gentle exercises to improve your flexibility and range of motion are a good strategy if you have joint pain. But as in all areas of life, it's possible to have too much of a good thing. Doing too many reps, or even doing an appropriate quantity of the right exercises the wrong way, can make your joint problems worse. And according to the University of Tennessee Extension, even seemingly harmless movements that don't feel painful or strenuous in the moment can lead to bigger problems for your joints down the road.

Take, for instance, two common upper-body strength-training exercises: front and side lateral raises with dumbbells. In these exercises, you hold a dumbbell at your side and raise it with a straight arm up to shoulder level, either to your side or directly in front of you. But neither of these are intended to be extreme lifts — your arm should be parallel to the floor, no higher, at the end of each lift. Raising your arm past your shoulder can wear down your rotator cuff muscles and tendons over time and eventually cause injury. Even if bigger lifts and stretches feel easy and make you feel like you're getting in a more rigorous workout, stay safe and avoid the temptation.

As noted by The New York Times, ice packs have long been a go-to post-workout recovery tool to soothe tired muscles. As The Washington Post notes, many pro athletes and coaches still swear by them. In addition, they're also a central part of the standard treatment protocol for joint and muscle injury — rest, ice, compression, and elevation — and many medical professionals recommend ice as part of your post-workout cooldown routine if you have joint pain.

But other reputable healthcare professionals are no longer so sure that icing your joints and muscles after a workout is such a great idea. According to The New York Times, several recent studies have revealed that muscles actually heal more slowly after being iced than without ice treatments. This is because ice stops inflammation, but inflammation is actually a necessary stage of the healing process. "The body has three stages of healing: (1) inflammation, (2) repair, and (3) remodel," physical therapist and American Physical Therapy Association spokesman Robert Gillanders told The Washington Post. "Without inflammation, we do not proceed to the other stages of healing. So the use of ice to control inflammation makes no sense. Why stop the first stage of healing?" So don't overdo the ice if you do choose to use it — and consult your doctor to make sure it's the right choice for you.