When you’re dealing with tendon pain, one of the hardest parts is knowing what you should keep doing versus what you should back off from. A simple concept I love using with clients is to think of your symptoms like a stoplight.

If an activity spikes your pain above a 4/10 or flares things up for more than 24 hours, that’s a red light—something we need to stop or pause for now. If an activity brings your pain to around a 4/10 during the workout but you’re back to your normal baseline within 24 hours, that’s a yellow light—a sign to proceed with caution and look for ways to modify load, volume, or technique. And if something stays at a 3/10 or less and settles back down within a day, that’s a green light—generally safe to keep in your program, maybe with a few smart minor tweaks.

Here’s the important part: everyone’s stoplight looks a little different. The same exercise that’s “green” for one person might be “yellow” or even “red” for someone else, depending on their injury history, current movement capacity, sleep, stress, and overall training load. And one movement that may feel “green” for you one day may feel “red’ another day as your body is constantly changing perception.

Tendons are especially sensitive to how much load, how often you’re loading, and how fast load is applied. That’s why two people with the same “diagnosis” can respond completely differently to the same plan, and why a typical cookie cutter approach is usually never successful. Being able to have someone in your corner to listen to your story, do a proper assessment, and make educated decision on the exact point you should be starting and give you a detailed plan from start to finish will be the difference between successful rehab and returning to the things you love, or failed rehab and constantly in pain.

This stoplight system gives you a practical way to keep training while still respecting your body’s pain signals. The goal is to live mostly in the green, be smart and strategic in the yellow, and avoid getting stuck in the red.