Dealing with pain can be very disruptive. Even minor pain can impede your performance, depress your mood and keep you from reaching your goals.

Our normal response to pain is to tense the muscles around the injured area. But excessive muscle tension can not only slow the healing process, it can also impair sport performance by decreasing muscular coordination and speed.

Relaxation training can help you reduce pain, speed recovery, and improve performance. Of course, relaxing through pain is easier said than done, but it’s a skill that improves with practice. Try taking a slow, deep breath, and then slowly exhale while saying “relax” to yourself and imagining your muscles becoming comfortably loose. Do this several times a day for a week and you’ll notice an improvement in your ability to relax.