Sometimes Pain Is Not Gain
Brian O Sutter
Personal Injury
Exercise is hard. That’s why a lot of people have trouble getting started with exercise and with settling into a routine even after they manage to figure out which fitness program works best for them. You may wind up with lingering pain and soreness after a workout, especially if you haven’t exercised for a while before that point, but soreness is a natural part of the process and it’s something you’ll have to fight through if you want to see any progress.However, if you feel a sharp or a stiff pain in your back or in one of your joints, then you’re experiencing something far less healthy than muscle strain.
Repetitive Stress And Stress Fractures
Outside of a sudden accident, there are two kinds of injury you should watch out for: repetitive stress injuries and stress fractures.
Repetitive stress injuries are almost always experienced by athletes who have been exercising hard for years, but even sedentary workers can experience something like carpal tunnel syndrome if their wrists aren’t properly supported. Still, if you’re over a certain age or you have arthritis, your joints may be less flexible and more prone to a serious injury than someone younger and in better shape.
As for stress fractures, while they’re also a hazard of constant exercise, they are also often found in beginners who push themselves too hard. As it turns out, exercise doesn’t just increase your muscle strength, it also builds strong bones. Your bones are quite alive with cells, after all, and while you may not grow once you become an adult it’s only because the cells that build your bones are evenly matched by the cells that destroy them.
However, the performance of these growth cells partly depends on how much pressure you put on your bones. If you don’t exercise much, your bones could be unusually weak – not to the point of osteoporosis, but to the point where your bones may develop thin hairline fractures thanks to the sudden and unexpected stress of a strenuous workout. By exercising regularly and only slowly increasing the strain you place on your body, you can strengthen your bones over time, but that knowledge isn’t going to help much if you already have a hairline fracture.
The seriousness of a hairline fracture depends on how big it is and which bone it happened to. A hairline fracture in one of your hands may mean some consistent pain whenever you try to use it, but at the same time you won’t make your injury worse unless you try lifting or holding on to something heavy.
On the other hand, a hairline (or compression) fracture in your back could spell disaster. Even a mild back injury can prevent you from working, especially if your job requires picking up anything more heavy than a pencil. Fortunately, stress fractures can heal on their own after some rest and relaxation, but unfortunately you may wind up racking up some medical bills just to figure that much out.
Exercising Your Rights
In most cases, if you experience a serious exercise-related injury it’s probably your own fault, and that goes even if you exercise at a gym. If you sustain an injury because you pushed yourself too hard or you used an exercise machine in a way that’s outside of its recommended use, then you have no one to blame but yourself. Even if you hurt yourself with free weights, the exact weight is printed clearly on the side of each dumbbell and it’s up to you to handle them responsibly.
However, liability can shift if you happen to be following the advice of a personal fitness trainer. If you are following someone else’s personal fitness advice to the letter and you sustain a serious injury, that person may be at fault for your injury and all resulting costs, including medical bills and lost wages. Even a gym membership waiver might not protect your trainer or the gym from paying for your personal injury, since among other things they should know how far to push someone who’s new to serious exercise.
If you should happen to be injured while exercising and you have reason to believe it’s someone else’s fault, and if this injury happened in southwest Florida, you should contact the All Injuries Law Firm today for a free consultation. As it says in the name, we’re ready to represent personal injuries of all kinds, and we’ll do our best to see that you get the compensation you deserve.