I keep Spraining my joints while working out!

Hi there, thanks for clicking. For the past 3ish months or so, I've been working out on a regular basis, I'm seeing results and it's all good and mighty, till I sprain a part of my body and have to halt all progress to let it heal!

First, I somehow busted my left wrist. I don't know how it happened, what I'm doing wrong...to my knowledge, my form is pretty good, I'm holding weights correctly, warming up, cooling down; what the hell is the issue?? :mad:

That somehow got better after a few weeks, it isn't completely healed though I still have to very carefully do moves where pressure is exerted downwards onto my wrists, like during variances of pilates or push ups.
THEN, I pulled my back muscles in the wrong way, and had a stiff back for 2 weeks. And this wasn't the good kind of stiff. It's where you sleep weird and can't breath too deep in fear of having your lungs collapse on you. THEN!! I pulled my neck, and couldn't turn to the left. And the most recent development in these ridiculous occurrences has been the spraining of my left ankle. This one is by far the worst so far, it's completely limiting the range of motion my feet has, and I can't put any pressure on it. It's all swollen and puffy, and has left me with no option other than to just wait it out and let it heal.

Now, I'm not some ancient person with rickety bones, I'm a healthy(ish) 18 year old female with a great apatite, a decentish sleep schedule and a sort of active lifestyle (I cycle to college check me out). So I'm baffled as to how I keep injuring myself. I'm obviously doing something wrong, I'm starting to spot a pattern of consistent injuries here, if that is an indicator for anything. :unimpressed:

What do I do to decrease the chances of me getting consistently injured?! or maybe a better question for the immediate situation would be; how the hell do I let it heal correctly? I feel like I'm getting antsy about losing progress and so jump back into the routine before I'm healed, so I'm adding insult to injury without realising.

Reply 1

KevDaKoala

Original post by Saf5238

I’m not the best person to answer this as I only know what I learned from my btec as I haven’t started uni (when I will be looking at this). But as far as allowing things to heal properly is giving them the right amounts of rest, protein and not pushing muscles too far.

The process of muscles getting stronger is hypertrophy. Which basically put is when you work out the muscle fibres get small tears. Rest and protein intake will repair these making them adapt to the excercise that caused it, meaning it will be able to cope with more next time.

I don’t know what you’re doing at the gym but my main points would be take it easy on the injured areas until they are healed. And when you do go back to the gym make sure that once you do go back to the gym that you are working within your body’s ability not what you want it’s ability to be. Have rest days and don’t just work one lot of muscles, work everything as they all aid in small ways for different movements.

Reply 2

KevDaKoala

Original post by Saf5238

To add when warming up do dynamic stretches (moving) and when cooling down static stretches (not moving) these allow the muscles to get ready pre and post exercise.

Reply 3

ArwenStar1111

Hi, first thing I'd suggest is getting your from properly evaluated by a PT or equivalent at your gym. Most gyms actually want you to keep using their facilities (and paying them your lovely money) and should be happy enough to arrange this for free for you. If you've ruled that out, you may want to visit your GP/physiotherapist and get yourself checked out for hypermobility. Ask your Mum if you were ever diagnosed with something like this as a littlie as well, you may have even had early OT or Physio for it as a baby. What this means is you're very prone to hyper extending your muscles and joints and causing exactly the kind of recurring injury pattern you describe. With correct management and some reeducation on how to work out you'll be back exercising again, minus the injuries.

Reply 4

doodle_333

your last point about letting it heal is the most important - it's a big thing with proper sprains (dunno if your back was actually a sprain) that they can permanently weaken the joint so you have to do some rehab to get it back up to standard if you wanna keep using it. I sprained my ankle 6 months ago while climbing and it took me 2 months before I could get back on the wall, 3 to even attempt any jogging and I still wear a support brace for any sports I do to prevent reinjury.

You can google up exercises to strengthen the joints you're injuring to prevent a recurrence and think about support braces as well. After that you just have to be careful - it can be hard at the start of a new exercise regime to really feel where the boundaries are between good and bad pain, tired and too tired... you have to learn those if you want to avoid injury.

Also I do know how you feel - within 5 months of starting climbing I'd given myself a really painful bone bruise, whiplash, pulled muscle and sprained my ankle. Since restarting after my injury I've had absolutely no problems at all (except for a weak ankle during the first couple of months while I was still strengthening it) because I've really tried to be conscious of my limits. I also took up yoga as it helps injury prevention in pretty much all sports and improves your body awareness.

I keep Spraining my joints while working out!

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