Waking up in the middle of the night with pain or stiffness, only to struggle in the morning to get out of bed, wondering if you’re going to be able to function properly for the rest of the day, or worried about driving or riding your bike because you can’t look over your shoulder properly from the sharp pain in your neck? Or perhaps you’ve avoiding walking, running or sitting too long because that ache becomes unbearable? You might be feeling pain for a number of reasons.

Tissue damage could be part of the problem. Different tissues give you different kinds of pain and have varying ways of healing and responding to movement and treatment, and different structures and body parts have different requirements for recovery. Also, the nervous system responds to pain by changing the way it interprets various body sensations, particularly if you’ve had the pain for a while. So it might need to retraining for a more productive response to movement in order to allow you to function normally.