All physical activity places your body under stress. Usually this is desirable: your body responds to these demands by becoming physically more fit. Aerobic exercise, by making your heart and lungs work harder, improves the efficiency with which you take in oxygen and burn energy. Your bones and muscles respond to the strain of weight-bearing exercise by increasing in strength and mass. A degree of physical exertion is therefore vital if you want to get results – the key to avoiding injury is to keep these pressures at a level that your body can handle.
Reducing the level of stress
You should not, of course, cut out strenuous activity altogether – this would lose you all the benefits of exercise. However, a selective approach can be useful if you know that a certain area of your body is vulnerable to injury. If you have problems with your knees, for example, the risk from a high-impact sport such as running may outweigh the advantages. You should also avoid sports such as basketball that involve demanding twisting and turning movements. There are other ways to reduce stress:
- Warm up and cool down. Warming up before exercise prepares your body for exertion by warming muscles and increasing flexibility. It is particularly important to help prevent muscle and ligament strains and sprains.
- Strengthen your body. Strong, balanced muscles will stabilize your joints. If you’re unfit or out of shape you should therefore start slowly and build up intensity as your strength improves. Targeted resistance training can strengthen specific joints, which will then protect the area from injury during other activities.
- Stretch. Lack of flexibility is a major cause of muscle strains, sprains and tendonitis, particularly in older people. For this reason, it is important to stretch after exercise.
- Improve your technique. Lack of skill increases your risk of injury, making you more likely to misjudge movements. It is also important not to be too reckless.
- Invest in good shoes. Very often, the most important piece of equipment is footwear. A good pair of shoes is vital in many sports to prevent injury, provide support and absorb shock. Wear well-fitting, supportive shoes that are designed to be used for the sport you are doing.
- Check the surface. If you’re a jogger, for example, running on soft grass or sand will place less strain on your hips and knees than hard roads. Uneven surfaces, tree roots and potholes can cause sprained ankles, while wet surfaces may be slippery.
Avoiding overtraining
Many sports injuries – and most overuse injuries – are a result of training for too long or training at too high an intensity. Your muscles need time to recover from exercise, so taking too few breaks or rest days can cause problems. Your body also needs time to adapt and build up endurance: too sharp an increase in the level of exercise is a common cause of overuse injuries such as runner’s knee.
Whether or not someone is training too hard depends on an individual’s own level of fitness, so it is hard to make specific recommendations. As a general rule, do not exercise strenuously every day and try to vary the type of exercise you do.
Adapted from Healthy Bones, Muscles & Joints, Reader's Digest
