What Girls Aren’t Always Taught: Pain Is a Signal, Not a Challenge
A conversation with Dr. Ali Ross on rest, pain differentiation, training load, and why young bodies aren’t invincible
TL;DW - here’s a succinct summary of our conversation with Dr. Ali Ross!
Girls are taught to push through. In high-level sports, they’re often taught that rest is laziness and pain is something you overcome. But Dr. Ali Ross, a physical therapist who works with athletes, offers a different framework: if you don’t learn to listen to your body’s feedback, you won’t know when you’re pushing toward growth versus pushing toward injury.
Her work focuses on helping athletes understand the science behind recovery, differentiate between types of pain, and build training habits that last beyond adolescence.
What Girls Aren’t Being Taught
Many athletes learn skills, routines, and volume, but don’t learn how to recognize when their body needs attention versus when it just needs effort. Dr. Ross’s reframe is simple but powerful: Rest isn’t stopping. It’s restoration, recovery, and relaxation. She explains that rest is when adaptation actually occurs. When you train, you create micro damage in muscle fibers. During rest, your body repairs and strengthens through supercompensation. Without recovery, you just accumulate fatigue without gaining the benefits. She also emphasizes sleep (8 to 10 hours) and cites research showing that sleep deprivation increases injury risk in adolescent athletes by up to 70%.
Her bigger point: rest isn’t a break from training. It’s part of it.
The Core Skill: Learning to Differentiate Pain
One of Dr. Ross’s most important ideas is teaching athletes to ask: Is this pain telling me to back off, or is this normal training discomfort?
She explains there are different types of pain:
Muscular pain: The fatigue you feel during a hard workout when you keep pushing through (normal)
Warning pain: Pain indicating you’re pushing too hard or that something is wrong (needs attention)
The problem? “When you always push through pain, you don’t learn what your limits are. You don’t learn how to listen to your body’s feedback.” Dr. Ross emphasizes that this skill takes practice and wisdom. It also requires good communication between athlete, parents, and coaches, because not everybody’s body responds the same way to a training program designed for a group.
Research backs this up: athletes who can differentiate between pain signals are 2 to 3 times less likely to develop overuse injuries.
The “Banking Fitness” Myth
Dr. Ross uses a piggy bank metaphor to explain why training overload doesn’t work:
“Think of your physical capacity as a piggy bank. You can put coins in (that’s your training) and fill it up. But what happens if it cracks? You don’t lose all your coins, they’re still there. But now you have to regroup.”
The key insight: those coins aren’t just training. They’re rest, recovery, nutrition, relationships.
“Sometimes we get so focused that training becomes all-consuming, but there are other aspects of life that fill you up and improve your ability to perform.”
The science: when athletes’ weekly training exceeds their 4-week average by more than 150%, injury risk increases 2 to 4 times. You’re not banking fitness. You’re overloading a system with limits.
Why Young Bodies Aren’t Invincible
Dr. Ross acknowledges that kids do bounce back faster (more pliable tissues, more stem cells, more neuroplastic brains), but adds the critical context:
“They’re also more susceptible to chronic stress, which makes them more vulnerable to overtraining.”
She explains pediatric sports injuries that only happen in kids, specifically growth plate injuries, because those bones are still developing and softer than adult bones.
Then she gets into long-term consequences girls aren’t warned about: RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), which includes disordered eating, irregular menstruation, and decreased bone density.
“For girls, if they don’t have their period by 13 or lose their period, that’s a sign they’re not getting enough to eat. And bone density? You only have until your mid-twenties to establish it. If your bone density peaks low, you’re more prone to osteoporosis and fractures for the rest of your life.”
Research confirms: female athletes with menstrual dysfunction in adolescence had significantly lower bone mineral density decades later.
A Daily Habit That Builds Long-Term Awareness
Dr. Ross suggests reflective practices that help athletes track how they’re feeling beyond just performance metrics:
Journaling: Not obsessively tracking symptoms, but reflecting on how you felt during training, what was motivating you, and whether you gave yourself grace or pushed because you felt you “should”
Rest and recovery windows: Times to process what you’re feeling instead of constantly being in high-energy mode
Communication: Open lines between athlete, parents, and coaches so everyone knows where the athlete is at
Her point: the best training programs aren’t just about volume. They’re about balance and listening.
Her Message to Girls Chasing Big Dreams
Dr. Ross’s closing insight is about permission and culture:
Learn what different types of pain feel like in your body
Don’t ignore signals just because you’re taught that stopping is weakness
Choose environments that support communication, not just compliance
Understand that backing off sometimes is what allows a longer career
She also adds something deeply aligned with HERcovery’s mission: “Sometimes girls are not taught how to listen to their body’s feedback. They’re taught to keep their head down and push until something snaps.”
The work isn’t just physical. It’s learning to trust what your body is telling you, even when the culture around you says to ignore it.