Causes and prevention of the most frequent types of injuries when working with weights
Have you noticed that they always happen when you are at your peak? Is it a coincidence? Do injuries always occur after a period of steady progress? Are they inevitable? The answer to the last question will be "no", and to the previous ones - "Yes".
If you have trained regularly enough and achieved good results, the risk of injury is particularly high. And the main reason is a decrease in alertness. Knowing that you are in good shape, you do not pay enough attention and time to warm up. You are satisfied with your results and strength, and you further increase the burden. What if there's a bit of reading in the last few repetitions? I can handle it!
That's why injuries are so hurtful. They can almost always be avoided. People usually ignore the first danger signals, thereby aggravating the situation, and continue to train until they get seriously injured. Remember how often you felt a slight pain, ignored it, or gave it a week for treatment, then went back to training and found that you couldn't do anything at all? Next, your schedule includes regular visits to the doctor, instead of visiting the gym.
Can injuries be avoided? In principle-Yes, although each of my familiar bodybuilders received some kind of injury, including myself. So what is my optimism based on? The fact is that experienced bodybuilders must constantly learn from their mistakes. The old adage "Those who can't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them" applies entirely to bodybuilders.
Tips for preventing injuries, based on experience gained over many years of training. You may find it necessary to make some changes to those exercises that tend to cause injuries. If you have already been injured, maybe the tips will help you recover faster.
Do your workout
This is the first condition for safe training. Always warm up, otherwise you will have problems. Stretching is also important, but not as much as a good warm-up. First, loosen the parts of the body that have to work, then stretch them.
A warm-up is simply working out a high number of repetitions in the exercises that you are going to do. The weights, of course, should be small. Warm-up, in fact, is gymnastics with low weights and an increased number of repetitions.
If you are already injured, do these exercises one after the other in three sets of 20 repetitions.
Now you have warmed up, the blood circulation in the muscles has increased, it's time to stretch them. First, the broadest muscles of the back and shoulders. Sit behind a high block, legs under support, weight 80% of what you use for 10 repetitions, grip at shoulder width. Grab the handle and let the weight stretch your upper body. Hold in the static contraction position for 10-12 seconds before relaxing and allowing the weight to stretch you. The entire exercise should take approximately 25 seconds.
The next stretching exercise is for the chest tendons. Hold the stationary support with your outstretched hand, turning your torso in the opposite direction, and stretch for 25 seconds. Repeat the same for the other hand.
And the last stretching exercise for the shoulder girdle, triceps and biceps. Stand in front of the machine for traction, grab a shoulder-width grip on the support, which in normal use of the machine is designed to hold the bottom of the body motionless. Pull this stationary object statically. Feel the stretch in your shoulders, biceps, and triceps. The exercise should be performed on a slow count of up to 25.
Do these three exercises one after the other in three sets each. After three laps of warm-up and three laps of stretching, which will take you 10 minutes, the upper body is ready to work. In each exercise of the workout, do one light and one moderate approach in front of the workers.
Shoulder and bicep tendinitis
Although this is usually mistaken for a shoulder injury (because it hurts), biceps tendinitis is actually the result of the tendon escaping from its bed on the upper end of the hamerus, the largest bone in the shoulder. In 95% of cases, the situation can be corrected. The pain is felt under the anterior bundle of the deltoid muscle and is therefore often mistaken for a shoulder injury. This is usually misdiagnosed as bursitis or a sprain of the articular bag of the shoulder girdle. If the biceps tendon is not returned to its place, it will cause shoulder disease, since the biceps ligament stabilizes the shoulder joint. When it is not in the right place, the side and back shoulder tendons experience additional stress, gradually become inflamed and begin to hurt. Eventually, it can end up with inflammation of the entire shoulder joint.
What causes such a common and painful injury? For bodybuilders, this is almost always a chest job. The main culprits are bench press and bench press on an inclined bench. Pullovers and hand extensions are also involved, especially those performed on a peck-Deck simulator when the hands are raised. If you have already had a similar injury, you should avoid peck-Dec like the plague.
Does this mean that it is necessary to avoid chest strain? Of course not. After all, the exercise is not to blame for the fact that it is done incorrectly. First of all, you must stretch and adjust the tendons. Second: don't use too wide a grip when doing bench presses. Best at shoulder width or slightly wider. And, third, pull your elbows back so that they, the hands and the point of contact of the neck to the chest lie on the same line, directly under the weight. When you touch the chest below this point or bring your elbows closer to the torso, the emphasis of the load is transferred from the chest to the tendons of the anterior deltas and the underlying biceps ligament in its bed.
If it is not in its proper place, any additional work causes it to RUB against the bone in an attempt to return to its normal position. This leads to an inflammatory process and the appearance of a tumor. The swollen ligament no longer fits in its bed. So any exercise and movement irritates her even more, and you have a "self-renewing" injury. If you still continue to train, you will experience not only local pain - soon it will be impossible to move the entire upper body. You are destabilizing the entire articular shoulder bag.
What should I do if such an injury occurred? First of all, it is necessary to completely eliminate the load on the chest, as well as other movements that cause pain. Then you need to remove the tumor so that you can return the ligament to its place. Take anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen and apply ice to your shoulder 2-3 times a day for about 20 minutes. When the tumor subsides (usually it takes 8-10 days), you need to put the ligament in place. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Very few doctors are familiar with this problem and can cope with such a task. If someone tries to help you by rotating your hand back and forth - in fact, they just don't know what they're doing. It is necessary to manipulate the upper head of the humerus under the tendon.
If you can find someone who can do it, good. If not, I'll tell you how to handle it myself. When the swelling subsides, roll two bath towels into a tight roller so that its diameter is about 15 cm. Put it under the arm as high as possible, bend the arm at the elbow and pull it to the shoulder (as in the upper point when bending the arms with dumbbells). Stand sideways to the wall, lean on it with the outside of your elbow, having previously put something soft, press your elbow hard against the wall. If you have done everything correctly, you should feel the displacement of the humerus.
If the tendon falls into place, you can return to training, but with some restrictions. Do not use a grip wider than your shoulders in any exercise. If possible, perform pull-UPS and pull-downs with the palms of your hands inwards. Press the dumbbells while sitting so that your palms are facing each other. These precautions will help to the biceps tendon to remain at its place.
After setting the tendon will be somewhat weakened, so strengthen it gradually, making slow, strict bending of the hands with dumbbells. When the biceps gain tone, their thickness increases, hypertrophy "presses" the tendon tight in its bed. But forget about the peck-Deck simulator.
Injuries to the elbow
Another very injury - prone area is the elbows.
Elbow injuries can be divided into two categories, one of which is associated with the upper arm, more precisely - with the area of attachment of the long head of the triceps. The problem is called "bone spurs" and concerns mainly bodybuilders. Bone spurs are caused by exercises such as the French press, in which the load falls more on the attachment of the triceps to the elbow than on the triceps itself. Such exercises can be called "fredericianum". This category includes the French bench press with dumbbells standing and lying down, especially when you lower the weight on your face. All these movements cause multiple micro-breaks in the triceps ulnar attachment. This can lead to injury long before you reach your desired triceps size.
In each case of such a rupture, no matter how small, the body sends calcium to this area for treatment and attachment of the ligament to the bone, where it is deposited. Injured bodybuilders, ignoring the body's signals, continue to do isolated triceps exercises, repeating this cycle. You do the French press, you get stronger, you feel pain, you stretch longer, you do different types of exercise, you feel pain again, and the body sends more and more calcium to the damaged area. You damage the ligaments, the body sends calcium, as a result, bone spurs grow. You have no choice but to find an alternative to these exercises. Spurs half an inch long can already be seen. Now even the bench press with a narrow grip and push-UPS (exercises that should be done first) cause discomfort, and it seems that the warm-up takes forever.
You think you need to work at full range in any position, don't you? It is not necessary. You can't always ignore the rules of kinesiology, just as you can't always break the law and expect to get away with it. Muscles have different sizes and shapes, but they have something in common: they are thicker in the middle, and narrow at the ends, passing into ligaments that do not receive as much blood as the muscle itself. This also applies to the triceps, where the middle of the muscle receives a sufficient amount of blood and the main load should fall on it, and not on the" dry " tendon. When you do push-UPS or bench presses with a medium grip, about two-thirds of the load is on the abdominal muscle, and one-third is distributed across the ligaments.
If the load distribution changes , it will reverse all the mechanics for which the triceps is a lever. Now two-thirds are ligaments and only one-third are muscle fibers. You lose not only muscle potential, but also make it harder to restore cells.
If you want to build large, hard and powerful triceps, do heavy push-UPS in a strict form or bench presses with a narrow grip. If you are still going to include lever exercises in your program, do them after the above and in a small number-a few sets for the final pumping.
The second type of elbow injury is associated with the forearms. It is commonly referred to as the" tennis elbow", although it is common for bodybuilders, golfers, and even carpenters. This type of injury occurs from a strong grip on an object, which causes the ligaments of the forearm to experience static tension in the area of the lateral and middle condyles. The official diagnosis of this condition is epicondylitis. When you hold an object firmly, the vibration caused by hitting a tennis or Golf ball or driving a nail is transmitted to the muscles and resonates in the tendons.
In bodybuilders, a similar condition occurs when performing biomechanically dangerous exercises that combine a strong grip and the need for movement in the hands. This is, for example, the pull of the barbell to the chin, which causes pain in the area of the lateral condyle. Medial epicondylitis can be caused by incorrect performance of heavy hand bends with dumbbells with the use of cheating. This movement loads the forearm muscles, especially the pronator Terres, which turns the hand inward, and the palmaris longus, which raises the forearm. They are all attached to the condyle of the medium.
At the first sign of these injuries, you should take a break from training, and then proceed with a program to strengthen your forearm muscles. Bodybuilders tend to pay a lot of attention to the development of certain muscles, forgetting about the neighboring ones. This imbalance can cause serious injuries, especially when these muscles share ligaments - such as in the elbow area. Large shoulder muscles are associated with a group of muscles that is usually underdeveloped - the forearms.
Balance is the key idea of bodybuilding. Work your forearms as hard as your biceps or triceps. Load the calves and biceps of the legs respectively with the load on the quadriceps, the back-respectively with the load on the chest, the trapeze-the same as the deltoids. This will help you not only avoid injuries, but also get a great, proportional figure as a result.
