The Most Common Fitness Injuries

The Most Common Fitness Injuries

To understand how to avoid exercise and fitness injuries, we need to understand the purpose of exercise to start with. Exercise is done to provide moderate and gradual increase of stress on our skeletal and muscular systems. This allows the muscles and cardiovascular system to strengthen and prepare to meet that same stress level again, only to exceed it and build even more strength and stamina. So, knowing how much stress is too much and what leads to overuse and injury will keep you on the road to a good fitness plan.
 
Exercise injuries can lead to chronic problems. Even though you need physical exercise to keep it, stay healthy, and look good, people get injured through exercise when they exercise the wrong way or do not wear the right footwear. Often times, the person who is exercising does not use the gym equipment appropriately or is untrained in fitness.The majority of fitness injuries are related to unfitness, poor techniques or maneuvers, over-training, or doing too much too soon.

By knowing what the most common injuries are, what their causes can be, and how to treat common exercise injuries, you can avoid them or at least lessen the downtime in your fitness plan. According to Dr. Jim Rogers, a leading fitness expert, over 79% of school sports injuries result from overuse, which can also be described as doing too much, too soon. Using common sense and being adequately prepared greatly reduces the risk of exercise injury.

Muscle Misery

Soreness of the muscle can occur the next day or up to 2 days after a workout. Muscle soreness is the most common type of fitness injury; so common, in fact, that most of you will not even consider it an injury, but just a normal part of your fitness routine. It usually occurs when you have exercised muscles that are unconditioned. Muscle soreness results in sore, stiff muscles that can persist for a week or more.
   

Sprains: How Serious Are They?

The second most common type of injury is sprains. A sprain is a damaged or injured ligament. Ligaments are the structures that attach bones together. When you sprain one of these structures, you feel pain with weight bearing or use. These injuries are caused by accidents that occur during a workout where the ligaments are damaged. Overuse or landing wrong can cause this painful injury. Any minor sprain can be treated with rest and ice. These are micro-tears of the ligaments or where the ligament is overstretched. Serious sprains will require surgery but this is rare. In the middle of the spectrum lie sprains that will put you out of action for a few days to a week.

Tendonitis Troubles

The third injury that often happens over the course of fitness training is tendonitis. It is caused by an injury to the tendon or the muscles. Tendons are the structures that attach muscle to bones. As with sprains, tendonitis injuries range from mild to serious. For prevention, people often exercise to strengthen the supporting groups of muscles that take the strain of the tendon. Treatment involves rest, ice therapy, and anti-inflammatory drugs. All of these steps reduce the swelling which causes the pain associated with tendonitis.