The 5 most common gym injuries

Physical activity should be an essential part of everyone’s life. Realizing how vital regular exercise is to one’s health, more and more people who are not involved in team sports or running choose to exercise at the gym. In most cases, the modern equipment found at the gym is safe. Still, it is essential to remember that the risk of injury is quite significant without taking proper precautions. How can you avoid damage by working out at the gym, and what are the most common injuries that result from exercise?

Can you avoid injury by working out at the gym?

With proper care and precautions, you can reduce the risk of injury after exercising at the gym. First and foremost, you should ensure that you have an excellent warm-up to ensure safety while exercising. People who have neglected this element in their training have found out very quickly how detrimental the lack of a gradual warm-up of the muscles has proven to be to them. A good warm-up should last about 10-15 minutes and include all major muscle parts. In addition to the warm-up, it is essential to have a sensible approach to the loads during exercise, which should be adapted not to your ambitions but to your current capabilities and fitness level.

People who are not able to plan their own training load should consider using a personal trainer. To reduce the risk of injury, it is also vital to perform exercises correctly and maintain appropriate time intervals between series. However, it is worth remembering that the gaps cannot be too long, as they may lead to muscle cooling. What else can contribute to the occurrence of an injury during exercise?

The risk of injury increases when:

– lack of concentration during exercise,
– Excessive strain on the body,
– Lack of an adequate recovery process,
– Inappropriate choice of sportswear.

Stretches

One of the most common injuries resulting from exercise at the gym is strains, which are a series of injuries resulting from excessive pressure on the muscles without prior preparation. To put it simply, such injuries occur most often in those cases where the warm-up was seriously neglected before starting to exercise or was not done at all. A pull may also happen if too dynamic and not fully controlled movements are performed during exercise. The injury primarily affects the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and groin.

Sprains

Exercising at the gym without proper preparation, you can also expose yourself to injury in the form of a sprain. A sprain is an injury that involves overstretching, tearing, and sometimes even rupturing of joint ligaments. The damage occurs as a result of exceeding the physiological range of mobility within the joint. Sprains during gym exercises most commonly involve the ankle and knee joints.

Depending on the complexity of the injury, four phases of the damage can be listed:
– stretching of the ligaments and joint capsule,
– fibrosis,
– tearing,
– Tearing combined with the tearing of a piece of bone structure.

Overloading

People who exercise at the gym are also at risk of muscle overload. This situation occurs when muscle parts are subjected to excessive loads and too much effort. Overloading is often associated with a lack of sufficient recovery time, which, combined with repeated disproportionate effort, leads to severe injuries. Overexertion most often affects the shoulder and elbow joints (the so-called golfer’s and tennis elbow). It is very often the cause of severe back pain.

Joint blockage

A gym is a place where people who exercise unskillfully are at risk of blocked joints, especially in the spine or at the junction of the range with the ribs. Joint locking occurs most often due to too rapid movement, poor positioning during exercise, or overloading. This is another injury that can arise if the body is not adequately prepared for practice. The result of joint locking is severe local pain, which usually disappears after a few days. However, if this does not happen, it is essential to consult a specialist as soon as possible.

Elbow pain

Elbow pain is another common injury in people who regularly exercise at the gym. People are particularly prone to elbow pain if they perform repetitive movements with heavy loads, which leads to muscle and tendon strain at the elbow – this is known as tennis elbow and golf elbow. In the first case, pain occurs at the lateral epicondyle of the humerus; in the second case, pain occurs at the medial epicondyle of the humerus. In the case of the so-called tennis elbow, the pain becomes particularly bothersome when bending the wrist. An additional consequence of such a condition is a weakened grip.

Although there are actually quite a few possibilities of catching an injury at the gym, it does not have to happen at all. It is enough to approach exercises with caution, performing them according to your own capabilities, not overloading your body and body at the same time. Of course, you can also not forget to conduct a thorough warm-up before each exercise at the gym.