Training with pain or injury, or around a pregnancy

What is left out, and what is not

An adapted programme leaves out the exercises that usually make the complaint worse, and keeps the rest. That is deliberate: carrying on training within your limits is the point, not stopping. In the app’s own words:

• Knee: no deep knee bends under load and no jumping.
• Lower back: no heavy bar on your back or from the floor, and no jumping.
• Shoulder: no heavy overhead exercises and no leaning on straight wrists.

Three questions first

Before you start a programme for the knee, the back or the shoulder, the app asks three short questions. They are warning signs that do not belong in a training plan:

• Does the pain radiate into your arm or leg, or do you have tingling or numbness?
• Has there been an accident, fall or surgery in the past six weeks?
• Do you have pain at rest, or does it wake you at night?

One yes and the app does not start

If one answer is yes, the programme does not start and the app refers you to your GP or physiotherapist. There is no button to carry on anyway. If all answers are no, you still tick one confirmation: "I will stay within my pain limits and consult my clinician if the complaint gets worse."

If you swap an exercise later, the app tells you when the alternative loads what the programme avoids because of your complaint.

Pregnant, and after giving birth

Strong Through Pregnancy follows the Canadian guideline for physical activity during pregnancy (Mottola et al., 2018) and ACOG Committee Opinion 804 (2020): no lying on your back from the second trimester, no exercises with a risk of falling, no overheating. Straining and training to failure are rules about how you perform an exercise, not exercises that have to go.

Back After Birth builds up from breathing and the pelvic floor to loaded strength. Running and other impact work do not come up before three months (Goom et al., 2019).

Here too a screening comes first. It turns the contraindications from ACOG 804 into questions in plain language, one topic per question. After giving birth, the first is: "Have you had your postnatal check and been cleared to exercise again?"

What you choose stays yours

The two pregnancy programmes stay hidden until you indicate yourself that they apply to you. That choice is stored only on your own phone, and you switch it off again whenever you like.

If you would rather train with a plan of your own, the programme builder (Athverge Pro) does the same: there you choose your complaints, the elbow included, and it leaves out what usually makes them worse. Those complaints do not go to the server, not to your coach and not to your gym; they only see the exercises in your programme.

What the programmes rest on

Every adapted programme cites its basis in the app. Knee-Friendly shifts the load to hip-dominant exercises (Willy, 2019). Back-Friendly avoids peak loading along the spine (Steele, 2015; McGill, 2015). Shoulder-Friendly trains below shoulder height, with external-rotation work (Haahr, 2005; Littlewood, 2015). The full list is on the Methodology page.

Where it stops

These programmes do not diagnose and do not treat anything. The app itself states that they do not replace assessment or treatment by a doctor, midwife or physiotherapist. Athverge gives no medical advice. If the complaint gets worse, talk to your clinician.