Why People Get Injured While Working Out

Have you ever worked out and injured yourself or tweaked something? You’re not alone. It’s a common occurrence, but not normal. These injuries can totally be avoided.

Workout injuries can often be summarized simply by this: doing too much too soon.

Whether it’s lifting too much weight, doing too many reps, running too far or too often, the bottom line is that if you end up in pain (and not a normal temporary muscle soreness), you did too much. The injury can come in different forms: muscle strain, a disc bulge, a tendinitis, etc. But I say this not to scare you or prevent you from pushing yourself, but just to make you aware.

In fact, our muscles and bones adapt and get stronger when we put it through stress during exercise. So eventually, what was once too much, is now the right challenge. Before, it was too soon to run that distance or sprint that hard, but after training, getting stronger, and building the capacity for your muscles to handle the stress, you can now handle it without injuring yourself.

In order for your body to get stronger after the stress, your body also needs rest. In the book, “Peak Performance” by Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, they give a simple equation: Stress + Rest = Growth. If you constantly stress your muscles, tendons, and bones every day, your body never gets a chance to really build them up stronger and more resilient to the stresses you’ve been putting on it. Then it just constantly gets broken down and never built back up.

So to avoid a setback from an injury, make sure you gradually progress and get adequate rest, especially if you’re starting up again after a long hiatus from the gym.