Are You Really Injured or just Weak?
Are you or have you ever dealt with pain?
It can be pain from moving a lot (like a sport) or pain from not moving a lot(like sitting for work).
Did this pain start because of some outside action or movement or did it seem to come out of no where and kind of random?
If you relate to the second question then you will benefit greatly from these words.
I want to start by just defining the word injury and weak, this way we can all be on the same page while reading through the content.
Injury- being damaged or harmed. An event or act that causes someone or something to no longer be fully healthy or in good condition.
Weak- easily damaged. Liable to break or give way under pressure. Lacking the ability to perform physically demanding tasks; lacking strength or energy.
You can see that these are very different words with different definitions. However, you can also see how they can be used side by side with one another and really relate. Read the following example and see if you can see, understand and relate the words WEAK and INJURY according to the scenario.
Ex.1: A 35year old 110lb female finance accounting manager / exercise novice wants to improve her fitness and she tries to perform a 110lb (her body weight) parallel back squat to completion on day 1 of her journey and then hurts her back trying a rep.
In this example it is very easy to see how this person might be too weak to perform a task while avoiding injury and future pains. She will likely be too WEAK to perform the movement and therefore most likely sustain an INJURY(like she had). She would need a lot of time training in order to achieve that level. If not done correctly, she could still leave the door open for injury whether it be acute or overuse.
What happens if i change the example? see if it seems as easy to understand the relationship of injury and weak.
Ex.2: A 35year old 110lb female finance accounting manager/ exercise novice who wants to run a marathon in 6 months. She starts a couch to marathon program she found online and begins running her miles as it states, day one is run/walk a mile. 6 months later she is seeing an orthopedist about a pain she has had in her knee for a few weeks. She has “Runners Knee” and therapy is recommended.
Article: IT band Syndrome and runners
Really not as clear cut as the first example right? Why do you think that is? In the first example the task requires a higher level of overall exercise experience than in the second example simply to get started. It is far easier for a wide variety of people to start jogging than it for that same group of people to squat their body weight. Her injury develops over time because her body was never really ready for running in such volume.
What about a third example…
Take a 35 year old 110lb female and make her a finance accounting manager working 50 hours a week in forty floor office building in downtown of city “XYZ”. 2 years later she goes to the doctor about a pain in her low back and neck that she has been dealing with for a little under a year, it just started to get worse and affect her day to day quality of life (popping Aleve like they are breath mints).
Article: Computer related injuries
Hey! stop giving me a weird look and just continue reading. Was it as easy to understand as the first example; or even the second? I would guess that it was not, because literally anyone who has experience with managing financial accounts can perform the same tasks she would have to do. A 400lb man has the ability to do the same quality work she does. The component of exercise does not directly relate to this example…until a problem arises. the tasks she does for her work become the movements she most regularly does and then result in the same outcome as the runner in example two and even the lifter in example one…just over a longer period of time.
Now what happens if you take this lady and make her all three at once assuming like most people, she does not have a full understanding of sports medicine and fitness? Probably sounds like a wide variety of people who are probably reading these words.
Your ability to perform at LIFE is weak
You do not have to be a power lifter/ Olympic lifter but, you do need a baseline level of strength so you do not:
Throw your back out sneezing while tying your shoe!
Have Chronic back pain from doing nothing but sit all day!
Develop Neck pay from looking at a computer screen!
you show your weaknesses everyday:
Every time you go to sit down you plop down without control, you cannot do one solitary push up, forget even trying a pull up, you can not an object up off the floor without pulling something and lastly heavy breathing from 1 or 2 flights of stairs.
Its time to stop blaming job or chores for your issues and realize you are responsible for the condition your body is in.
What is the first step you must take before you find a solution…..Admitting that there is a problem needing to be fixed. In this case, the problem is that you are weak.
You say “ but I am in pain doesn’t that mean I am injured” .
I say “Yes and no. Yes you maybe injured now but NO, to The fact that you are experiencing pain now does not negate the fact that your pain might have come from a lack of strength to perform a task over time.”
Your joint mobility is poor. your flexibility is poor. your strength is abysmal and your power output…child-like. Just admit it and we can move on to fixing it.
It is OK to admit your faults and shortcomings, embrace them, then improve upon them. Without this process there can be no improvements.
My job is too easy to get injured.
The easier the task the less you know how strong or a weak you may be. How hard is a job where you use a computer all day? The answer is not very hard. Regardless of what you are doing with them; the bad postures and repetitive movements can lead to some serious pain experiences over time.
Like I stated above, if the task is easy then the idea of becoming injured can literally be left out of your thought process. That is one of the reasons the idea of % injury risk drops when you reach the third example. The activities associated with the third are far less physically demanding than the previous two examples. In this case there is an increased importance of knowing “what you are not doing” can be just as harmful to you as the things you are doing.
Acute vs Overuse(<===click for more info)
This is one of the main issues with identifying the risk of injury to a task. If you do not know what I mean when saying acute or over use I will give you a simplified way to understand it
Acute= Short term result of actions (Hard task up front, exposing weaknesses and immediate instance of injury)
Overuse=Long-term result of actions (Easy task up front, completion successful, time+repetition exposes weaknesses and leads to injury)
The first example uses an action that can lead to an acute type injury(too heavy of weight choosen). It is very easy to understand the risk of an action when it can literally happen right away. While as we made our way to the third example that injury awareness gets blurred by the time it would take to feel the affects(pain) of the actions.
There are a lot of these overuse injuries from sports,training and life that can be avoided. You need to evaluate the potential for injury by the movements or lack of movements you will be doing on a consistent basis. So, the next time you start a new activity whether it be a new job or recreational activity know that your actions will determine your ability to live life today or years from now.
Your solution and my conclusion
Become Strong…in every sense of the word.
Here is a general and simple solution
Increase your Ankle, hip, thoracic spine joint mobility
Strengthen everything else using a philosophy of compound movements first then assistance, isolated and corrective exercises for areas where you are really lacking.
Again you do not have to lift 1000’s of pounds of weight to be strong, just strong enough to reduce incidence of injury
Originally published at fitletes.com

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