When Working Out Can Lead to Injury...

What are the signs and what you can do to prevent it? 

When overly tense muscles lead to feeling like you can’t keep increasing your weights or way more recovery time than before. 

Do you or have your ever felt “I’m working out so hard and I feel like I’m at a plateau?” “I’m getting old and not as flexible”

 “Why do I feel so tired and everything is so tight when I’ve been doing the right thing going to the gym or working out everyday?’

"Why am I not feeling as stable or agile as I used to?"

 You’ve been working out and you start slowly feeling your body...

-getting a little restricted 

-struggling with one side (you may see that one heel isn't lined up, turned more in than the other during a squat). 

-struggling to lift the same amount 

-your form is shifting the balance (you're feeling  a bit unstable, leaning forward with your shoulders and weight in your toes) 

-noticing a limited range of motion (having trouble moving as gracefully, tripping more or feeling heavy when you move throughout the day). 

This is your body communicating to you in the earlier stages that it is out of alignment, may have an impingement that needs care. We often think that just resting can do it. Our nervous system can get stuck sending the same fight or flight communication causing those muscles to be tight even when resting. 

Let’s look at it a different way…

Let’s talk about a muscle that usually isn’t considered when we work out…. your heart! Let’s consider how our body works. Our bodies are made and communicate through our fluids flowing like rivers, lakes and streams. There are many different kinds of fluids for the different systems, blood, neurons, gastrointestinal etc. Our heart is always working, we don’t have to think about making it move, it pumps (works) then relaxes (allows blood to flow into it to pump again). What happens when our heart has an area of overstimulation or fatigue? It doesn’t work, part will lag and we feel tired and can have a heart attack. 

Back to our voluntary muscles… when our muscles are overworked/hypertensive even in a rested state,  we request that they work, they don’t understand that you want them to work, they already are! How can they work more when they are overstimulated? They think they are resting when they are engaged. 

What can this do for your muscles when you go to the gym? 

Our body is designed to ‘fix’ things that are not working properly. They will call on other muscles that are not designed to work in that way. This will cause awkward puling on bones, organs and other muscles in your body and create misalignment. We have fascia in our body that is like a latex suit wrapped around everything, but that’s a different blog (coming soon) that will also get trapped into this pull and it isn’t easily stretched because it is more like a spiderweb. The workout that we choose can also cause the fascia to tighten, repetition like running on asphalt (the harsh surface and linear motion) or just riding a bike or walking. So even if we are doing yoga, our muscles may be too far along to self correct and relax as much as then need to or as deep as they need to on their own.

Most likely, your body already has misalignments from living a good, fun life (hopefully you have some great stories to share when the kids are older), having a car accident or two (about 10 for me ugh but that helps me learn to educate others) and these misalignments are usually the start of tensions that are not on both sides of your body. 

Preventative care from a professional will help you learn those imbalances and also help you to lessen the imbalances to your best health. Chiropractors can assist with your misaligned bones, therapeutic massage therapists can help with your muscles, craniosacral therapists assist with allowing your muscles, neurons and craniosacral fluid flowing. If your muscles are relaxed, the bones could still be out of alignment. Assisting your body to relaxation, (after all, how often do you have to remind yourself to take a deep breath in a day? We can all use some assistance to learn how to release and not just ‘relax’), instead of doing exercises on the other side of your body to get your whole body to the same tension, can allow your body to have an increase in communication and fluid flow. Functional fitness specialists vs personal trainers (or a box gym) can help you learn to tell what is imbalanced before an injury occurs. Good ones will even play well with others (ie. send you to a good chiropractor and bodyworker since we all know that it isn’t just one modality or type of therapy that ‘fits all’). 

This will lead to better fluid flow in your body and keep your health better for your best quality longevity. 

Eistien-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same result. If you notice something doesn’t feel right, don’t keep doing that movement and get some work done. Don’t just change your movement, it will come back to being a problem, it will most likely but a bigger problem and may even shift since you are doing that movement anymore. That tension doesn’t go away, it draws in other areas. 

In Health and Wellness, 

Michelle S Krause LMT

Owner of Vital Fitness Holistic Center

www.vitalfitnessholisticcenter.com

President of the Severna Park/Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce

www.holisticchamberofcommerce.com 

Photo by Sam Sabourin on Unsplash