Why Do You Get Injured?

If you know why injuries happen you'll have more knowledge to better prevent one from occurring in the first place.

Prevention is a less painful and frustrating road than recovering from an injury.

Injuries happen when a tissue encounters a big enough load over a period of time to cause structural failure. One of the most common causes of sports injuries is training error:

• Too much or too little
• Too often or not often enough

Part of a training programme to increase fitness, stamina and strength is to take the body into a degree of overload to stimulate tissue adaptation.

This is followed by a period of recovery for the body to repair and increase it's resilience to that load. You might know this as "training gains".

Over-training and under-recovering means the body can't repair adequately before the next load is applied. This pushes the tissue deeper into overload and ever closer to structural overload ie. injury.

Here's Scott Dye's pathophysiological model of injury:

(From Dye SF. The pathophysiology of patellofemoral pain: a tissue homeostasis perspective. Clin Orthop Relat Res 2005;436:104)

Let's look at the different zones in more detail:

• Zone of Tissue Homeostasis - This is where the tissue is able to withstand the training load being applied to it. 
• Zone of Supraphysiologic Overload - The training load is at a level that begins to cause microdamage to the tissue. You might notice muscle soreness, stiffness, aches and reduced performance. Most people don't recognise that they're en route to getting injured at this stage and keep training.
• Zone of Structural Overload -  The training load is now great enough to cause significant damage. Signs include pain, swelling, heat and loss of function. Common structural overloads = muscle strains, tears, sprains and ruptures. 
• Envelope of Function - This is the borderline between the Zone of Tissue Homeostasis and the Zone of Supraphysiologic Overload. The aim of a training programme is to raise the Envelope of Function so you can tolerate bigger training loads more often. However there are diminishing gains as frequency and repetition increase, as you can see from the graph.

You can't see it in this image but there is a 4th zone below The Zone of Tissue Homeostasis:

• The Zone of Sub-physiological Underload - This is where you're de-conditioned and, essentially, unfit because you're aren't using you body enough.  Here you have very low resilience to exercise and get sore easily. Many beginners to fitness and sports start here. If you've been injured for a while you may also be re-starting your journey back to fitness from here. 

In training programmes where the aim is to increase fitness, stamina and strength you'll push your body into the Zone of Supraphysiologic Overload. This creates microdamage to the tissues. The body responds by going into anabolism, producing growth hormone to repair the damaged tissues and make them stronger so they'll be better able to withstand those loads in the future. 

To make these training gains the body must be allowed sufficient time to make the necessary tissue repair. This doesn't have to mean sitting on the sofa! though

Recovery can mean exercising at a lower intensity or doing a different activity to avoid re-stressing those overloaded tissues. An example, might be walking or cycling at 60% Maximum Heart Rate after a race, or training the upper body after legs day in the gym.

This is why doing lots of different types of fitness classes, and mixing up your exercise routine is so beneficial in helping to prevent injury.

As an instructor, I favour teaching no more than 3 to 4 of any particular high energy class a week. By high energy I mean classes like spin (group cycling), Les Mills BodyPump and Les Mills Core. With HIIT-style workouts my limit is 2 to 3 a week.

It's clear from the graph that the higher you lift your Envelope of Function the bigger your Zone of Tissue Homeostasis becomes. Therefore you become more resilient and less likely to get injured. 

You can also see from Dye's model that repetition and frequency are one of the biggest injury risks, The more times you exert your body the lower the margin of safety becomes and the less resilient you are to getting hurt. 

Over-training and under-recovery is something I see ALL the time in the fitness world, especially among group exercise regulars. All instructors who teach more than 8-9 high energy classes a week are over-trained - it's a professional risk and accounts for the early retirement of many fitness pro's.

Many participants will regularly do 4-5x high energy classes every week, and some do 2 or more strenuous classes a day 4-5 days a week. Unlike professional athletes recreational exercisers often don't have periodised training cycles, regular taper weeks or an off-season where they can recover.

3x Tips To Reduce The Risk of Getting Injured

• Do different types of classes or workouts - the wider the variety the better
• Be proactive about recovery - Plan adequate recovery time between strenuous sessions, and have good recovery protocols in place
• Remember that frequency and repetition are one of the biggest risk factors in getting injured - plan your routine with this in mind

NEXT STEPS

• Come to a Stretch, Yoga or Pilates class with me - here you can spend time observing how your body responds to different movements in a guided sequence
• Book into the "Moving Away From Pain With The BYB Method", a 2 hour workshop showing you how to reduce chronic pain and release muscle tension so you can move with ease and joy again. Sunday 3rd September, 1pm to 3pm - click HERE for all the info (6x spaces left).
• Attend a half-day mind-body retreat - these are deeply relaxing, fun, social small group experiences typically held in various locations within easy reach of Worthing, West Sussex. The next one is on Sunday 3rd December,
• Subscribe to my email list to receive "The Movement Chronicle", a weekly e-newsletter delivered directly into your inbox every Monday morning,

To find out more about my classes and retreats, or to join my email list you can contact me via any of these channels:

• Email at norma.pearson1@ntlworld.com
• DM me on Facebook Messenger 
• WhatsApp message to 07801 867361.