Any Remedy for Leg Pain?

by Christiana
(Hertsfordshire)

Recently I did some intense cardio dancing exercises but after a while I stopped it because I got pains in my thighs. The pain had come to the state that just doing a little exercise like walking up the stairs gave me pain; it'd been like this for a while and I'd been stretching but it'd not worked.

Could you tell me the reason for this because even my doctor did not seem to know; he's the one who told me to stretch but it had no effect and the pain is very uncomfortable.

My Answer

If you "jump queue", meaning you jump straight into an intense cardio workout without letting your body the time and leisure to gradually build up strength and endurance and most of all, to allow it get acclimatised to the impact of the exercise, you've courted some troubles.......

This is because in any form of exercise, you should start from a low impact level first, then progressively move to intermediate (or moderate) and finally to advanced (or high intensity) level.

The pain could be because of this reason - your body could not take the sudden load you impose on it at the high intensity level especially when you start the workout without doing adequate warm-up exercise.

I suggest the best thing for you to do now is to REST, a complete one. Rest until the pain totally subsided and gone and your thigh muscles healed, fully recovered. I mean it. If you try to start exercising, even doing the gentle stretching (with well-meaning intention) before the injury heals, it ain't gonna cut it.

After the complete rest and full recovery, start from "new" ground - low impact level first. And remember to do some 3-5 minutes of warm up exercise. It's that important.

Here's my 2 cent worth on the importance and benefits of a warm up.