What are the Common Injuries During Workouts, Know its Treatment and Prevention

In today’s world, workouts have become a part of daily routine as more and more people have become health conscious. With workouts, the body gets prone to injuries. These workout injuries can happen to anyone irrespective of whether the individual is new to doing workouts in the gym or is an experienced. Even lightest of exercise such as walking can result in an injury. The most likely or common injuries that may occur during workouts are muscle strains and tears, inflammation of the tendons, and other foot and ankle injuries. This article gives a brief overview of what are the Common injuries during Workouts, how to treat them, and what are the different ways to prevent such injuries.

What are the Common Injuries During Workout?

What are the Common Injuries During Workout?

Below mentioned are some of the Common Injuries During Workout:

Muscle Strains: An individual can strain the muscles while doing a workout. This can happen if the individual has not done a proper warmup prior to doing the workout. The muscles strained the most during workouts are the shoulder muscles and the rotator cuffs of which the rotator cuff muscles are mostly likely to strain or tear. This can happen while lifting weights without proper warmup or using the wrong technique.

Ankle Sprain: Exercise and workouts are quite strenuous to the lower extremities of the body. While weightlifting, a lot of the weight of the body is concentrated on the lower extremities, especially the ankles. Sometimes while doing this, there may be twisting of the ankle the wrong way causing a sprain of the ankle while working out. Additionally, with repetitive weightlifting and the pressure put on ankles may take its toll and may result in a stress fracture of the ankle which has a longer recovery period.

Knee Injuries: Another common workout injury is an injury to the knees. The knees also bear a brunt of the body’s weight during a rigorous workout especially lifting weights, performing squats, and other workout regimens in which a lot of pressure is put on the lower extremities tends to affect the knees as well. This tends to result in the knees getting injured. Some of the common workout injuries that can happen to the knees are knee dislocations, ligament tears, meniscal tears, and tendon tears.

Tendinitis: This is yet another common injury that can happen during workouts. Tendinitis is a condition in which the tendons tend to get inflamed due to repetitive stress and this is something which is common with rigorous workouts. The tendons of the shoulders, forearms, wrists in the upper extremities and the knees, ankle, and thighs in the lower extremities are the tendons which are most likely to get inflamed with workouts.

Wrist Sprain/Dislocation: The wrists are one of the most vulnerable body parts when it comes to workout injuries as a lot of weights, dumbbells and other workout equipment require the wrists and forearm to lift them. When this is done on a repetitive basis, this may result in the wrist to get sprained or dislocated. Weightlifting and exercising with dumbbells are the most likely ways to dislocate or injure the Wrist during workouts.

What is the Treatment for Common Injuries During Workout?

The best way to treat Common Injuries during Workouts is by following the RICE protocol which is Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. Do to use the affected area for workout for a few days till the pain and inflammation calms down. Ice the injured area for 15-20 minutes two to three times a day to calm down the inflammation and reduce swelling and pain, apply a compression bandage to cut down swelling, and elevate the area of injury to minimize the swelling.

Additionally, NSAIDs in the form of Tylenol or ibuprofen can be taken to reduce pain, swelling, and inflammation associated with injury caused during workout.

In majority of the cases, common injuries during workouts heal on their own within a span of a week. In case if the injury and pain prevails then a visit to a sports medicine doctor may be of help in finding out the cause and prescribe appropriate treatment for the Injury during Workouts.

How to Prevent Common Injuries During Workout?

The Common Injuries during workout that have been mentioned above are something that can be prevented if the individual follows certain guidelines. The following are certain steps that one can follow in order to prevent injuries during workouts.

Appropriate Warm-up and Cool Down Can Help Prevent Common Injuries During Workout: It is extremely vital to do a proper warmup before you start doing a workout. This is to make the stiff muscles loose and supple and reduces significantly the chances of sustaining injuries during workouts. Some of the ways to warm up the body before doing a workout is skipping, riding an exercise bike, jogging for about 10 minutes. Similarly after finishing a workout, you can walk for a few minutes just to get the heart rate back to normal and the muscles to relax.

Stretching: Just before beginning to workout after appropriate warmup, perform gentle stretching of the muscles to make them ready and flexible for the rigorous stint of exercising and to prevent common injuries during workout. This can also be done after a workout stint to calm down the muscles.

Move Gradually: To prevent Injuries during Workouts it is essential to move into a new exercise gradually and ease into it and then increase the intensity. This will prevent any excess stress on the tendons, muscles, or ligaments and prevent any injuries while doing the workout.

Prevent Overuse: This is yet another important aspect of preventing injuries during workout. It is important not to do a particular exercise over and over again for days at a time as this will eventually cause the muscles and tendon to wear out and tear.

Rest: This is yet another important aspect in preventing injuries during workouts. It is always advisable to break your workouts to probably say three times a week at maximum and give the muscles rest the remaining days so that there is no extra stress put on them and they are fit and fine for another stint of workout.

Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:May 9, 2017

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