by Steven Hefferon, CMT, PTA

If you go to the gym to get healthy and fit, look good, feel good and pamper your ego, then I urge you take a minute to think about something,

Do you remember the old adage, “People like to do what they are good at and comfortable with”? Are you living that old adage at the gym? Most people do. They have a set routine at the gym, yet it’s that very routine coupled with the mechanics of the equipment that can lead to trouble-either very quickly or over time.

As beneficial as we know exercise can be, there are some things you need to be aware of before starting. The challenge is in knowing injuries can happen and how to prevent them. There are two basic categories of injuries: the sudden accident (a.k.a. trauma) and what can be described as a process injury (in other words, the long, slow development of a condition.) My goal is to protect you from both types of injury.

Traumatic Injury at the Gym

Let’s start with the 5 basic concepts of working out in order to show you how easy it is to injure yourself in a traumatic way.

•    Intensity: How hard you work out.
•    Frequency: How often you work out.
•    Duration: How long you work out.
•    Progressive Resistance: Using more resistance with each set you perform.
•    Progressive Overload: Starting at a higher level of resistance at subsequent workouts.

Each one of these principles has the ability to cause injury. But when you couple them the drive to eek out one more  repetition as you fatigue, you go into all kinds of contorted positions to get the job done.

All of a sudden, Bam-O! A hundred different injuries can happen. And they will take a long time to heal. You will have defeated the entire purpose of going to the gym in the first place. Please understand that the body can tolerate a lot of abuse before you pay the penalty of an injury. Just know that injuries can happen in seconds and the effects can last a lifetime.

Injury as a Process

Traumatic injuries do happen. But more often it is the slow progression injuries that are far more sinister and very well may  be the root cause of some traumatic injuries. So I would like to focus on what happens over the long term so that you can make a change now to prevent injuries.

I have spent the last 10 years of my life dealing specifically with what are called muscle imbalances and their effects on the back and body. In describing the concept I will use some examples and try to make you aware of what possible injuries you could be facing.

Muscle imbalance can be defined as strength and flexibility of one muscle group compared to the opposing muscle group. So if you compare the strength and flexibility of the quadriceps to the opposite muscle group, the hamstrings, in nine out of 10 people the quads will be overly strong and overly tight compared to the hamstrings. That’s the definition of having a muscle imbalance.

How Back and Body Injures Start!

The quads are always going to be stronger then the hamstrings, so you may be wondering what is wrong with that. Let me give you some possible examples of what can happen if your quads are drastically stronger than the hamstrings. As I give this example, understand that there are other imbalances that often happen at the same time to develop this condition. For example, the hip flexors and the glutes can be out of balance too.

When the quads are out of balance with the hamstrings, there can be uneven and excessive wear and tear on the cartilage and ligaments of the knee.  The knee will not function correctly and conditions will develop to the point that running and other basic physical activities will be painful, or even impossible.

Second, balance between the quads and the hamstrings keep the pelvis in a neutral and stable position. But when you have overly strong and overly tight quads, your pelvis will be pulled in several different directions. In some cases the whole pelvis is pulled excessively forward. In other cases one side of the pelvis comes even more forward and the hip elevates,
causing the pelvis to rotate. This is very common in physically active women over 40.

When the pelvis is not in the most neutral and most stable position possible, the spine may go into abnormal curvature. It is that abnormal curvature caused by the muscle imbalance that can set you up for hip problems, SI joint problems, back pain and sciatica.

How Does This Happen?

The very equipment you are using at the gym is either directly or indirectly helping you develop your muscle imbalances and setting you up for future problems.

Let me give you some examples. You cannot help but develop raw quad strength when you use the leg extension machine. As I asked you before, do you stick to exercises that you like to do? Let’s face it, everyone hates to work the hamstrings because they are weak and it is difficult. So most people overwork their quads and under-work their hamstrings.

Another example is the calf raise machine. Again, the calf muscle will always be stronger then the muscles in front of the shin, but when you blast your calves and do not work the muscles in the front of the shin you are setting yourself up for plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, Achilles tendonitis and even knee problems.

To recap, working out with gym equipment puts enormous unnatural force through the joint, restricts movements to linear motions and can very easily overdevelop muscle groups. This combined with the development to muscle imbalances is a hidden root cause of most if not all physical injuries at the gym.

Action Steps

As with any new desire to make a change in your life, you must first have a starting point. There is no easier way to get started then to take an inventory of where you are right now. It will not help you at all to make subjective assessments about yourself and not be honest, so I have a few suggestions:

•    Take photos of yourself. I would not always recommend this.  But in cases were your health and wellness are at stake, why not? Here is what you can do. Put on a bathing suit and have someone take photos, front, back and both sides, making sure that you see head to toe. Then take a look–not with a judging eye but a caring eye, looking for areas that are not in balance. For example, is your head straight? Is your head over your shoulders or is it forward of your shoulders? Are your shoulders level? What about your hips, are they level? (Look at your side view and suit line as a guide.)

Those are just some of the areas that you can gauge yourself on. You can also use the photos as a reference of how you are now so you can look back at how you were then.

•    Feel the pain. The best way to assess pain is by asking yourself how you feel in the morning, during the day and at night. With this one you will need to be honest with yourself, and I suggest that you write this down. You can even mark up the photos you took by writing on them at the body part or parts where you feel pain.

•    Listen to your body. If you are working out and you feel a little something and you’re not quite sure what it is, rest assured it’s your body telling you it does not like what you are doing to it.

•    Build your awareness. If you live with fear, worry or doubt about your weight, health or medical condition, the best way to overcome that it is to build your knowledge on the subject. Study what others already know.Working with a professional fitness trainer can drastically improve your chances of developing a safe, sound and effective exercise program.

And remember to always stay enthusiastic about the process. That is the secret to achieving your goals. If you listen to your body, you just might learn something about it!

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Tags: back pain, dangers at the gym, exercise, muscle imbalances, Presidential workout routine, strength training

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 2:29 pm and is filed under General News, fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.