Due to weight gain and flat feet, the biggest obstacle I have to Hit is pain in my feet. Any type of running or jumping rope gets painful in the ball of my foot in about a minute. I don’t mind the pain, but obviously want to avoid injury.
My question is how to use pain as a guide. Do I stop when it first gets painful but try to do it more frequently, or just suck it up and do as much as I can?
Lifting weights has given me a lot of information about pain vs injury, but I don’t have as good judgment with this stuff.
Burning pain that gets more intense as the exercise continues is okay - that’s lactic acid buildup. Sharp, tearing pains are not good and you should stop immediately f you feel one of those. Lactic acid buildup in the foot muscles is unusual in my experience.
I dunno bout flat feet, but I get the same sort of thing in my feet jumping rope or running. I have extremly skinny and long feet so they take a lot stress during those types of exercises. The only thing that helps me is doing exercises such as calf raises. Those seem to strengthen the tendons running along the bottom of the foot and I no longer eperience pain while running or jumping rope.
Have you thought of using gym shoes with arch supports?