Chronic overuse injuries...how they plague you.

Chronic overuse injuries seem to be something that you just have to deal with when you play a sport.  A chronic knee injury, or shoulder pain when you train or excercise too much.  This isn't always true. 

When there is an imblance somewhere in your gait or in your sport, the injury you conitinually seem to be battling, can be just that...an imblance.  The plague you fight each day might be something that is fixable with the proper analysis, exercises and tissue work.  When an injury occurs, your body either fixes it by itself, or it needs help to fix it.  When the injuries are chronic, thats when the body could use some assistance.  With deep tissue work, specific for your problem, and proper exercises that help balance your body, chronic can become a thing of the past. 

Ever heard of people saying that cross training can be a great injury prevention.  When you cross train, your body doesn't pound the same pattern of movements over and over.  For example, when doing martial arts...a lot of the defense techniques are performed on one side of the body.  For instance left, and most training is geared towards front techniques.  So imagine your body, training to stand mostly with your left side forward, and trained to defend with left side forward.  What does the right side of your body look like?  It's slightly weaker and less coordinated then the left.

I pitched softball for 10 years through middle, high school and college.  The entire right side of my body was steller, not to toot  my own horn.  But when I stopped pitching and just began to lift weights to stay in shape...my left side was aweful.  I could curl 25 lbs on the right and only curl 20 lbs (on a good day) on the left.  Same for my legs, abs...all of it.  Not that I wasn't toned, but my strength wasn't the same when compared left to right.  So the point is...when dancing, fighting, jumping, running, spiking etc....if you don't work out in the opposite direction or never challenge your body in other ways, imbalances occur.  Those imbalances become chronic issues and come from over use.. but also from underuse. Stabilizer muscles are weak, gross muscles are too strong. 

Along with proper rehab exercises, deep tissue work needs to be an assistant to the healing process.  When you injure your muscles, you have to give your muscles a way to heal the damaged tissue.  Tissue work allows that to happen.  Breaking down the scar tissue and working with the fascia and muscle tissue allows your body to heal itself.  To keep your body healed and prevent a re-occurance of the same injury, exercises are implemented.  Those exercises maintain the problem areas. 

Stress Fractures or Shin Splints

What is a stress fracture?  Simply put, your bones begin to fracture under continued and repeated stress.  It starts out as a small fracture that is easily missed, often called a stress reaction.  If continued stress is put on the bone, it develops into a stress reaction I, II, and III, where it will go through the bone completely. 

While working with several runners over the last few years, I've seen many of them pound the pavement towards their goals of half and full marathons.  They work through lots of aches and pains that are typical for a new runner and for a seasoned runner.  What people will continue to overlook is the swelling and continued deep pain that won't go away.  If you're new to the sport of running, dancing, etc., the aches and pains are expected.  If you ask a seasoned sportsman, they will tell you its part of the process.  What can be missed?  Aches and pains that don't change.  That can spur an entire new blog post, but lets stick with stress fractures.  When you start to develop something like a stress fracture, the pain doesn't move up or down your leg for instance. It doesn't always get worse and very rarely will it get better (not without rest or avoidance of the activity that started the problem).  Now before you get all excited about pain not changing...staying the same, you've had it for a good week etc., that's not what this post is for.  The post is meant to keep you aware of what CAN happen and make you think twice about seeing someone that can help you get to the root of a problem.  Swelling can be present or it may not be present.  If the affected area is swelling, then all the more reason to get someone to take a look at it. 

When getting an expert opinion, get with someone that works with sport injuries.  Some experts might take an X-ray of the affected area and show you that nothing is wrong.  Be aware...with persistent pain and swelling, there might just be something larger looming.  Getting further imaging is always a good idea.  MRI scans show much more than bone, which is all an x-ray shows you.   I've seen several x-rays that are taken along side an MRI.  The X-rays shows nothing, if only a faint line of possible delusion, the MRI...shows a clear stress fracture making its way through the bone.
Continued pressure/stress on a damaged bone only creates more stress and prolongs the issue.  Catching a stress fracture early is key to getting it healed properly and getting you back to your sport of choice. 

You've heard the saying, once you sprain an ankle...you become a chronic ankle "sprainer" (which can be avoided; I'll blog more on that later)..always an ankle "sprainer". Well, the same saying can also be said about stress fractures.  Once prone to a stress fracture, typically (wiggle word) it means a stress fracture should be something you think of if similar pain creeps back into your routine.




     

Our opening salvo

This is a test post for our blog here at cornerstone rehab and spine. Here I will discuss interesting events and information related to sports injuries, health, and wellness. Stay tuned for lots of interesting tips on how to keep yourself healthy, in shape, and performing your best at whatever you do from work to play!