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Three Common Overuse Injuries And How To Help Prevent Them
Blog | July 10, 2014
Tweaks and strains are common enough when working out, but often a minor ache can turn into a major nuisance if we don’t address it immediately. Overuse injuries can occur for a variety of reasons. Sometimes insufficient rest is the culprit. We don’t give our bodies enough time to recover from a strong week at the Zgym or we’re not sleeping enough. Fatigue leads to bad form and bad form can cause injury. Bad posture is another factor that puts unnecessary stress on our bodies over time. This leads to muscular and skeletal imbalances that make us more susceptible to overuse injuries. Here are three common overuse injuries and how to help manage and, more importantly, prevent them.
Neck Strain – If you sit at a desk for extended periods of time at work or at home you’ve more than likely experienced a dull to sharp ache at the back of your neck. This is caused by an unnatural forward tilt we unfortunately develop when staring at our computer screens for hours at a time. It’s important that we do not look down constantly at our work, but look straight ahead with proper posture – shoulders back and relaxed in the same manner when standing. Neck strain is often made worse when we don’t maintain a neutral neck position when working out. Whether you’re doing squats or pushups or kettlebell swings, always stare straight ahead. Staring straight ahead maintains the natural curvature of your spine. Never look up or down. Doing so puts an unnatural amount of stress on the vertebrae in your neck causing pain or injury.
Knee Pain – Knee pain is a common overuse injury, but in most cases, it’s avoidable. Proper form when squatting, doing burpees, lunges, etc., goes a long way toward saving your knees from feeling sore and achy. First and foremost, your knees should never bend or buckle inward from any type of squat-based movement. Your knees should always extend slightly outward. Always drive from your heels, not your toes or the front of the foot, on the concentric part of the movement as well. This allows the force to be properly distributed to your muscles and places a lot less stress on your knees.
Lower Back Pain – Perhaps the most common overuse injury, lower back pain can nag us for days if not years due to bad posture when sitting and standing. It’s also made worse from a weak, unbalanced core. Rounding the lower back when working out is a major cause of pain and injury. Do not arch your lower back! Always maintain a neutral back, especially when doing exercises such as kettlebell swings, squats, deadlifts, etc. Also, consistently stretching your glutes, hip flexors and hamstrings loosens up the lower back and reduces the amount of stress placed upon it from bad posture and form (For more details about addressing lower back pain.
As always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. By addressing posture and form at the Zgym early and often, we dramatically decrease the chances of developing these common overuse injuries.
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I can attest to the last one – it took three years of x-rays and misdiagnosis from different osteopaths/physios to discover that my lower back and hip pain (which at its worst felt like a burning bar across my lower back) was in fact a result of hypertension in my butt! Now very careful to stretch properly and I also use a foam roller after most workouts. Acupuncture was also a surprise help.
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YES!!!! You just made me so happy Zuzka!!!! I just read your comment on Facebook about making a dvd series for moms!!!!! I really wanted to ask you if you could do a dvd series just for pregnant moms or things like that!!!!!! I know I will buy it without thinking about it twice!!!! You are soo awesome!!!! ( I haven’t asked so far because I know how busy you are with everything else). I have all of your dvds and I love every single one of them. The Kettlebell one is my favorite so far and I am anxiously waiting for the next advanced series and for the next Yoga DVD. I am almost done doing ALL of your super crazy amazing ZWOWS and since I am running out of workouts and I can’t join the ZGym yet (working on joining it soon, hopefully) I am looking for YOUR old workout videos from BodyRock.tv (I have to say that I go there only for your videos)….. and I really like those workouts!!! They are ssssooo hard but so fun!!!!! I am thinking about purchasing a sand bag and a dip station….slowly…..because those workouts look so fan and effective! But I don’t think that you use them in the ZGym, do you? I also love to re-do the workouts because it’s true that you can see your progress; sometimes it is in your proper form, sometimes you can do it faster, or you are not seeing stars everywhere and the light at the end of the tunnel when you are done xD. Thanks for teaching me to keep a journal with your score and thoughts =).
SSSSSSoooo…..I actually have a couple of questions for you. You are such a great inspiration to me and I consider you like a big sister because you always have so many good and deep advices to give us and with all of your videos (like all the workouts, arm balance challenge, diet tips….) you take such a good care of us…..and I have to be honest, I am very grateful that a lot of that is for free for us (you don’t know how much you helped me with your free videos of recipes and workouts, so grateful for you). The first question is…..how is your ankle? Is it totally healed? I hope so! ^_^
The second one is: how do you always keep a positive and happy attitude like you do? I saw some of your videos about this subjects, but I am wondering how can you keep a good attitude like you always do. Without disrespecting anybody, you can find a lot of negative comments from fans or whoever reads your posts, and sometimes they even fight with each other and say things about you. I know that just by reading some of them my mood gets affected by that….but you don’t get discouraged and keep being happy and bringing us such a positive spirit. How do you do that? How don’t you get affected by negative things that people can say to you and about you (you know, in general, nothing specific). Because you put yourself out there so much it is inevitable that you will receive both positive and negative feedback. But it looks like you know how to handle them…..right? =D I would really love to hear your opinion on this, because…..holy cow….you are so great!!! XD
So anyway, I just wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to thank you for everything that you do for us! I wish I could do something to repay you.
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What can I do against shin splints?
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Two things may help. (1) Foam roll your shins. You need to do it form 1-2 minutes per leg. If it hurts like heck, then you’re on the right track. Because the shins are such prominent bones, people forget there are A LOT of muscles on all sides of the tibia (not just the calves). (2) This is an old track and field trick someone once passed along to me when I was having shin splints. Walk on your heels to better develop the muscles on the front of your shins to balance out with the muscle tone of the calves. Just do it for short trips to the bathroom and while cooling down after a workout. It doesn’t take much, but it worked for me.
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Also, glucosamine supplements are helpful for “popping” joints.
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I was taking glucosamine with some slight noticeable change. I have for the last few months switched to turmeric and the results are quite drastic from what I had experienced with the glucosamine.
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Hi,I started your training 3 weeks ago and its been really great.Only thing is i have got a knees pain..getting worse..is this normal?Before this i use to train 3 times a week but always avoiding to work on my legs too much ( have got them pretty wide already ).it may be because my knees are strengthening?should i continue? (bytheway i am not overweight)
Thanks in advance
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lake tahoe, nv, usa
Hi Ana, It’s not normal to get a knee pain and it’s not good if it’s getting worse. It could be for several reasons. I haven’t seen you doing my workouts so I can’t judge if you do the exercises with proper form, but regardless of that, it’s most likely some deviation in your posture. The cause may not be necessarily where the pain is – your knee in this case. You may have too week or too tight hips for example which is putting too much stress onto your knees. It may not be a problem during sitting or walking, but if you’re doing workouts that are forcing your body to move in all directions at a high intensity, you’ll feel the compensation and pain. The only thing I can suggest right now is to modify or stop the exercise completely when you start feeling pain in your knees. Try to check your form, sometimes we don’t realize we’re doing something wrong until we see ourselves doing it. Try to record yourself from the side when doing lower body exercises such as squats, lunges, deadlifts, kb swings, etc. Look for rounded back, lifted heels, knees that go way over your heels, or knees that are pointing different direction than your toes. If you have flat feet or feet that tent to roll on the outer edge, that may affect your knees, and proper form as well. I will be including postural therapy sessions into the ZGYM in May so stay tuned.