Hey maybe that's a dumb question but sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between pain due to muscle soreness (stiffness) and actual soft tissue, joint related pain. How do you that? ^^
nah not a dumb question.. i wish i had a good answer though :/
in general, i think soft tissue/joint related pain lingers around longer without getting better.. so there's that, at least. ie, calf soreness vs calf soreness + achilles pain. Calf soreness will go away, achilles pain will linger around longer. So unless we do something really crazy (like out of nowhere high rep heavy squats), soreness that doesn't go away for like 4+ days is probably a bad sign.
there's also the fact that muscle soreness can "disappear' after we warmup.. but joint issues/non-muscle tissue damage should still give us some signs that something isn't right. ie, after warming up really good, then going to squat, and our hip feels really achy.. and then we slowly try to work into it and get the pain to disappear - which it may or may not.. and then we just continue squatting. That's probably a bad idea -> body is telling us that there's a problem. Also calf soreness vs calf tear, soreness will disappear after warming up, the tear will keep telling you it's there.
so I guess pain after warming up is a pretty good indicator of a potentially worse problem.
I wonder if there's some other tricks like, "if you ice it for 15 minutes and it still hurts, it's a problem" .. hehe.
There's also the thing that happens in my brain, where: "I know it's bad, but I don't want to admit it to myself".. I guess that's a great sign of something being a tear/tendonitis/joint injury.. I know for a fact that I mostly get those thoughts when something bad is going on. Those conflicting thought processes are basically an alert.
i dno, i'll have to think more about it for sure.
pc!!