Headache After Working Out Even When You’re “Doing Everything Right”? Read this
Headaches after working out are a common but confusing issue, especially when you are already doing the right things for your health. This article explains why these headaches happen and what your body may be trying to tell you.
Different types of post-workout headaches stem from movement patterns, hydration, nutrition, and nervous system stress. Understanding the root cause is key to resolving the issue rather than masking symptoms.
With the right strategy and support from physical therapy treatment, you can reduce these headaches and build better resilience so your body can handle workouts without negative side effects.
You’re a healthy person. You take care of yourself. You research all the things to do and not to do. You drink water, eat protein, and exercise regularly.
But you can’t figure out why you keep getting a headache after working out even though you're doing everything right.
You finish the workout fine, but within a day or two you feel the headache coming on.
Pressure builds in your temples, behind your eyes, or the base of your skull and you think, “Here we go again…”
Sometimes it lingers the rest of the day, but other times you’re down and out for several days.
You’re doing everything you’ve been told should prevent this… and it’s still happening.
This usually isn’t a “you’re doing it wrong” problem.
It’s a “your body is compensating” problem.
This is frustrating. But it is totally fixable.
Your body isn’t failing you. It’s responding to something it doesn’t have the capacity to handle (yet).
You just need the right strategy to give your body the support it needs. That way you have the capacity and resilience to thrive through your workouts.
Here’s what we are going to talk about in this blog post:
Why you get a headache after working out
Types of headaches after working out
Why “doing everything right” isn’t fixing it
What actually helps a headache after working out
How physical therapy can help a headache after working out
When to seek support
Why you get a headache after working out
The most common reasons you get a headache after working out are:
Compensatory movement patterns
Shoulder blade muscle weakness
Core weakness and/or poor core coordination
Neck and/or upper back stiffness
Altered breathing patterns
Dehydration or electrolyte imbalance
Improper fueling and nutrition
Over-exertion
Nervous system dysregulation
Several of these factors can be at play at the same time, contributing to your headache after working out.
Types of headaches after working out
There are several different types of headaches. To truly fix your headache after working out, you need to understand the type of headache you’re feeling.
You can experience more than one type of headache at the same time. This is totally normal and just means that you may need a blend of multiple strategies to feel your best.
Tension headache
In my clinical experience, tension headaches are one of the most common types of headache people experience after working out. I’ve even experienced this myself. However, they are often misdiagnosed as migraine or neuralgias in the medical system.
Tension headaches feel like dull pressure, squeezing, and tightness around the head- kind of like a vice. You can also feel a tension headache around the eye, behind the ear, and at the base of the skull. Jaw tension and clenching can also occur along with a tension headache.
Tension headaches are caused by increased tension in muscles of the neck and shoulders, usually triggered by the increased muscular demand during the workout. The most common muscles involved are the upper trapezius, SCM (aka sternocleidomastoid), levator scapulae, suboccipitals, and cervical paraspinals.
At the root of this increased muscle tension are compensatory movement patterns. The muscles that support and move the shoulder blade aren’t doing their job and the core isn’t doing its job to stabilize. As a result, bigger, more superficial muscles like the ones I just mentioned take over to get the job done.
Over time, this results in chronic neck muscle tension and pain, as well as tension headaches that are especially triggered by an upper body workout.
For all the details on tension headaches after working out, check out our blog post Why You Get a Tension Headache After Working Out and How to Prevent It.
Cervicogenic headache
A cervicogenic headache can often occur along with a tension headache. Tension headaches are more muscular related, while cervicogenic headaches are more joint related.
There are lots of tiny joints, called facet joints, that connect one vertebrae to another. Just like your hip joint can get stiff, these facet joints can get stiff too.
When they get stiff and your neck isn’t moving well, it triggers pain up one side of the head, around the ear, and into the temple.
For more info on a stiff neck, check out our blog post How Long Does a Stiff Neck Last: And when should you stop waiting it out?
Dehydration headache
Dehydration headaches feel like a generalized pain throughout the forehead, temples, and top of the head. They are often accompanied by feelings of dry mouth, light-headedness, and fatigue.
There are two aspects of a dehydration headache:
The amount of water you drink
Electrolyte balance
First make sure you are drinking enough water, both throughout the day and during your workout. Aim to drink half your body weight in ounces of water spread throughout the day. For a 200 pound person, this equates to 100oz of water each day. Don’t chug it all in a few small bouts.
Now, this is just the baseline.
If you are doing an intense workout and/or sweating a lot, you need more water than this. Be sure to increase your water intake on these sweaty days.
If you are regularly hitting your water intake targets, then consider supplementing with electrolytes.
Electrolytes are the sodium, calcium, potassium, and magnesium ions in the body. These electrolytes are crucial for the function of your muscles and nerves.
Without proper balance, you can experience things like lightheadedness, dizziness, poor memory, difficulty with concentration, headaches, and muscle cramps.
I love using LMNT Electrolytes. You can try them out and get a free sample pack when ordering through this link.
Blood sugar related headache
It is absolutely crucial that you fuel your body well both throughout the day and surrounding a workout.
When you don’t eat enough, your blood sugar spikes and crashes, causing irritable moods and headaches. It’s a metabolic disaster.
Under-fueling can often happen unintentionally in busy, high-achieving women and men who forget to eat or don’t leave enough time during the day to eat.
Blood sugar related headaches can feel similar to a dehydration headache. It is also common to feel woozy, spacey, irritable, and shaky along with a blood sugar related headache.
If you exercise first thing in the morning, it can be okay to exercise fasted. However, current research, especially for women in peri-menopause, suggests that consuming a small amount of carbs and protein before a workout can be very beneficial. This small amount of pre-workout nutrition tells your nervous system that it isn’t starving and it is okay to expend energy for the workout.
It is important to re-fuel after a workout, again so your body doesn’t think it is starving and actually builds muscle and capacity from the workout. This aids in blood sugar regulation as well. Aim for at least 20-30g of protein after a workout.
Exertional headache
Exertional headaches are triggered specifically by exercise and lifting. It feels like a throbbing or pulsing sensation, usually on both sides of the head.
This is often triggered by breath holding, sudden intensity spikes, and poor pressure management (aka bearing down).
In this scenario, you’re creating more internal pressure than your body knows how to handle. It can suddenly increase your blood pressure and trigger the throbbing, pulsing headache.
The key here is to breathe throughout your workout and heavy lifts. Also be sure to do a proper warm up and cool down surrounding high intensity work.
Nervous system driven headache
At the root of a nervous system driven headache is a nervous system that is “running on high.” You’re carrying a lot in life, work, relationships, family…and the stress burden is high.
When the nervous system is already in overdrive, workouts become another stressor- not a release.
Your workout isn’t the problem, it’s just the needle on the haystack of an exhausted nervous system.
Nervous system related headaches usually feel like pressure, tightness, or squeezing around the head- similar to a tension headache. It is usually more common during periods of high stress, poor sleep, and poor recovery.
Migraine
A migraine attack is a complex process, often rooted in the nervous system. Exercise can be great for long-term management of migraine, however sometimes exercise can trigger a migraine.
Exercise as a trigger often occurs when other factors are at play, such as exercising in hot temperatures, dehydration, improper fueling, high stress, poor sleep and recovery, or the presence of other individualized migraine triggers.
Why “doing everything right” isn’t fixing it
You likely don’t need to do more things to fix your headache after working out. You might even be doing too much and that overload is actually causing more stress to your body.
Your strategy just needs to be refined.
It is important to identify the type of headache(s) you’re experiencing and address the underlying cause of that type of headache.
This will fix the compensation at play and help your body and nervous system function optimally under the load of the workout.
What actually helps a headache after working out
Here are some strategies in addition to the recommendations already provided above.
Remember- you don’t have to implement ALL these strategies. Pick the ones that are the low hanging fruit for you, easy to implement, and fill a void that you as an individual human need to address.
Do the basics well
Simplify and focus on the basics! Get 7-8 hours of restful sleep, eat enough food (focus on protein), drink enough water, and potentially add electrolytes. Also give yourself white space to experience peace and joy each day- a body under constant stress and “doing” doesn’t recover from workouts well.
Stop letting your neck do all the work.
Strengthen up your shoulder blades and core so that your neck can be a neck- not a core! It isn’t designed to do all the stabilization and lifting work, which is what often happens with compensatory patterns. Check out our blog on tension headaches after working out for more details on how to do this.
Learn to breathe under load
Stop holding your breath while you lift and exercise! It is important to have the core coordination to stabilize through the core AND move at the same time.
One of the first things we teach our clients is this core breathing technique. It integrates core activation with breathing so that you can efficiently stabilize your body while you move. Check out the video and give it a try! Once you master this technique at rest, incorporate it into your workouts.
Exercise with strategy
More is not always better. If you are pushing yourself at a high intensity for too long or over training, your body will not reap the benefits of your workouts.
Keep high intensity work to no more than 10-15 minutes with full recovery in between bursts of intensity. Be sure to properly warm up before a workout and cool down afterwards.
Take at least 1-2 rest days per week and strategically space out your workout days. For example, take at least one day of relative rest between lower body lifts. Instead of doing two leg days in a row, put an upper body or yoga day inbetween. This relative-rest time will allow your body to recover from the workout and actually get stronger from it.
Address the root cause of your headache, don’t chase quick relief
Quick relief from stretching, massage, heat, ice, or anti-inflammatory medications can help you initially respond to a headache, however it doesn’t fix the problem. It can make you feel like you're “doing all the right things,” when in reality you’re just putting a bandaid on symptoms.
Read back through the different types of post-workout headaches and get real with yourself on what your gut is telling you about the root cause. Again, you don’t need MORE. You need a better strategy.
How physical therapy can help headache after working out
Physical therapy can help with all these kinds of headaches!
Our bread and butter, what makes us SO EXCITED, is helping with the movement and stress related headaches such as tension headaches, cervicogenic headaches, and nervous system related headaches.
If you’re having a hard time identifying the root cause of your headache, getting help from a physical therapist will streamline this process and ease the mental burden and frustration of trying to figure it out on your own.
Physical therapists are expertly trained to recognize and treat movement dysfunction. You likely don’t notice how you’re compensating, or at least the extent of your compensations. You also didn’t go to school to be a movement expert, so it’s not your job to know all the answers! That is okay, we are here to help.
Physical therapists also can skillfully help with wellness education like hydration and nutrition habits, productive stress processing, and sleep optimization. These elements are woven into all of our custom treatment plans here at Empower Physio and Wellness because they are crucial to building life-long resilience.
When to seek support
It is time to get support for your headache after working out if:
You’ve been experiencing post-workout headaches for more than 1-2 months
Your headaches last longer than 1-2 days
Your neck feels tight and stiff most of the time
You’ve tried getting help, but the problem isn’t fixed
You’re getting frustrated
You’ve tried modifying workouts
You’ve started cutting back on your workouts or limiting activity
You want to live a long, healthy, resilient life
Remember, a headache after working out is totally fixable. You don’t need to stop working out. You don’t need to push harder. You just need a more strategic approach.
Where to find physical therapy for a headache after working out
Have you tried these strategies and want more individualized support?
If you are located in or near Westerville, Ohio we can help you with physical therapy to improve your headache after working out!
You can get started right away by learning more about our physical therapy services or getting in contact with us.
If you have additional questions, we would love to talk with you, hear your story, answer all your questions, and see how we could help.
You can call or text us at (614) 423-9731 orschedule a free discovery call. You can also learn more aboutEmpower Physio and Wellness + our team or check out otherservices we offer.