By Dr. Annalise Calo, PT, DPT
Understanding the Root Cause of Pain, Recovery, and Building Resilience
You played pickleball over the weekend, and now your knee hurts. Your shoulder aches after tennis. Your hip has been bothering you since training for your next half marathon.
So, naturally, you assume that’s where the problem is.
But what if it isn’t?
One of the biggest misconceptions about sports injuries is that pain always tells us where the problem lives. More often than not, that’s simply not the case. At WAVE, we frequently find that the place you’re feeling pain isn’t where your injury story actually begins.
The body doesn’t move one muscle or one joint at a time—it moves as a connected system. When one area isn’t doing its job efficiently, another area is often forced to compensate.
Sometimes, that’s where pain shows up.
Sports Injuries Rarely Start Where You Think They Do
Whether you’re playing tennis, running, lifting weights, golfing, or chasing your kids around the backyard, movement requires multiple systems working together.
Your hips influence your knees. Your ankles influence your hips. Your shoulders depend on your core and upper back mobility. Nothing works in isolation.
That’s why knee pain isn’t always a knee problem.
A runner with limited ankle mobility may place excessive stress through their knee. A tennis player with poor shoulder blade control may develop shoulder pain despite having perfectly healthy shoulder tissues. Someone experiencing hip pain may actually be compensating for weakness or instability elsewhere in their body.
Pain often appears where the system can no longer compensate—not necessarily where the dysfunction began.
This is also why resting an injury doesn’t always solve the problem. Rest may calm symptoms temporarily, but if movement patterns remain unchanged, it’s often only a matter of time before discomfort returns.
WAVE Insight: “Pain is information—not always a diagnosis. The place that hurts is sometimes the last piece of the puzzle, not the first.” — Dr. Annalise Calo, PT, DPT
What Should You Be Looking For?
One of the most valuable things we do as physical therapists is identify movement patterns long before they become larger problems.
Sometimes, small inefficiencies can quietly exist for years before pain finally gets your attention.
A few common things we evaluate include:
- Differences in strength from side to side
- Balance and single-leg stability
- Restricted mobility throughout the hips, ankles, or thoracic spine
- Compensatory movement patterns during exercise
- Coordination and muscular endurance deficits
- Training volume and recovery habits
You don’t have to be a competitive athlete for these things to matter.
Active adults are athletes, too.
Whether your goal is running your first 5K, keeping up with your grandchildren, or returning to recreational sports without pain, movement quality matters.
Building Resilience Starts With Movement
At WAVE, we’re less interested in telling people what activities they should stop doing and more interested in helping them continue doing the things they love.
Building resilience isn’t about avoiding movement—it’s about preparing your body for it.
That often starts with strength training.
Research continues to demonstrate that appropriately prescribed strength training plays an important role in reducing injury risk while improving performance and longevity. But strength isn’t simply about lifting heavier weights. It’s about building the capacity to tolerate the demands you’re asking your body to meet.
Mobility matters, too.
If you don’t have adequate mobility through one joint, another area will frequently compensate to create the movement your body needs. Sometimes that’s harmless. Sometimes it isn’t.
Finally, movement quality matters just as much as strength and mobility.
You can’t out-strength train poor movement patterns. Progressing exercises without addressing compensations often reinforces the very things contributing to discomfort in the first place.
Recovery Is More Than Rest
One of the most frustrating things we hear from patients is, “I’ve rested for weeks, and it still hurts.”
Recovery isn’t simply waiting for pain to disappear.
Sometimes recovery means gradually rebuilding strength. Sometimes it means modifying training loads or improving mobility. And sometimes it means identifying movement patterns that have been contributing to symptoms for months—or even years.
Recovery should be active, individualized, and intentional.
The goal isn’t simply helping pain go away. It’s helping you return to the activities you love, feeling stronger and more confident than before.
WAVE Insight: “We’re not just treating injuries—we’re helping people build bodies that are more resilient moving forward.” — Dr. Annalise Calo, PT, DPT
Where Sports Physical Therapy Fits In
Sports physical therapy isn’t reserved for collegiate or professional athletes.
It’s for anyone who wants to continue moving well throughout their lifetime.
That may mean:
- Returning to running after an injury
- Preparing for a marathon or endurance event
- Improving strength and mobility for recreational sports
- Recovering after surgery
- Addressing recurring aches and pains before they become larger problems
- Building confidence returning to exercise after time away
There’s rarely one single exercise that’s responsible for an injury—and there’s rarely one exercise that’s responsible for fixing it.
The answer is usually much more individualized than that.
The Bottom Line
Sports injuries—and movement-related pain—rarely exist in isolation. The place that hurts is often only one part of a much larger story.
Building resilience means understanding how your body moves, identifying potential limitations before they become larger problems, and creating a plan that’s designed specifically for your goals.
At WAVE, we don’t believe in simply chasing symptoms. Our physical therapists take the time to understand the bigger picture so we can help you recover from injury, improve performance, and continue doing the things you love for years to come.
Because sometimes the question isn’t, “Why does my knee hurt?”
It’s, “What is my body trying to tell me?”
About the Author
Dr. Annalise Calo, PT, DPT
Dr. Annalise Calo is a physical therapist at WAVE Physical Therapy & Pilates who is passionate about helping athletes and active adults recover from injury, build resilience, and move with confidence. She utilizes an individualized, evidence-based approach that combines strength training, movement assessment, and hands-on care to help patients return to the activities they love while optimizing long-term performance and wellness.