Injuries Explained….WITH KNIVES!

As a fitness professional it is my job to take the a complex topic and simplify it for an everyday joe or jane to understand without…

As a fitness professional it is my job to take the a complex topic and simplify it for an everyday joe or jane to understand without confusion. Sometimes humor helps…other times its gets me weird looks. ANYWAY….

One of the hardest things I have to do on a daily basis is try to help someone correct something they did not know was wrong. Whether it be Posture, their Squat, deadlift, Bench and even their running and walking techniques. As any coach would tell you they would much rather work with a beginner then to work with someone who has been doing things for years. This can be easily stated as “old habits die-hard” or “its hard to teach an old dog a new trick”. Now, I hate those sayings but they work well in this scenario. All of that being said, the majority of the people I come into contact with are a bit older or have some experience exercising on a consistent basis and have developed some imbalances. Most people understand what an injury is in simple terms…”its bad and we want to avoid them as much as possible”. Very true, but did you know that there are Sharp Injuries and Dull Injuries? Well there are and this is how I explain it to people I communicate with.

What does this mean? to the medical community…nothing but as an everyday example it is a simple reference that makes understanding injuries easy for everyone.

Well I will start with the Sharp Injury first because that one is the easiest to understand.

SHARP Knives

They can cut many things besides bread and are quite sharp. If you were to mistakenly swipe it across your or someone else’s plush layer of skin I can assure you…they( I mean you) would know about it pretty much right away. If I were to run at you swinging this in the air what do you think would happen to you when I made contact? A very nice slice would be the correct answer.

This would be associated with an Acute Injury. Acute Injuries are ones that happen fairly quickly and are usually not premeditated. I can not remember the last time I heard a person tell me they sprained their ankle playing basketball or they broke their arm on purpose. Sometimes they can be the inevitable reaction of a movement you knew had the possibility for injury while other times it can happen during a movement you never really thought of as dangerous. Brief Overview

Acute Injury=Sharp Knife

It happens quickly, you didn’t want it to happen nor did you think it would happen.
 But you know about it right away and need to take action to getting it better as fast as possible.

That is a simple way to understand an acute Injury.
 Its Quick, painful and sometimes catastrophic. (that’s What she said)

DULL Knives

A Dull Knife Injury is the hardest to get across or convince someone of. This is especially true if you have been doing something for years without an issue….yet.

I believe that this is the least threatening version of the knife. A rounded tip and can easily be used just as effective if you were to hold it the wrong way.

given the same or similar scenario as above:

If you were to mistakenly swipe it across your or someone else plush layer of skin I can assure you…they( I mean you) would know about it pretty much right away and think that you are trying to tickle them it is so gentle. Again, If I were to run at you swinging this in the air what do you think would happen to you when I made contact with your skin? I would bet my life that it would not break skin and now your arm is all covered in butter so I can not even grab you when you run away from the white windowless van parked in the back of your neighborhood walmart super store.

Now if I were to ask you to make a similar injury as the bread knife from above, using the same amount of pressure but your only tool is the butter knife. How long would it take you to complete this?

It could take you days, months or even years to replicate the acute injury of a bread knife only using the butter knife. You would have to slide over the same spot over, and over and, over and, over again X100000+. You would eventually get and it would slowly get more painful and agonizing but it would take a lot more time and repeating the same or similar movements.

This would be associated with a Chronic Injury. Something that takes a long time to develop due to a small or seemingly insignificant imbalance or movement.

These are the injuries where you don’t really consider IT as an injury or developing injury until it starts to greatly affect your daily life. It is like that person who “throws their back out” picking up a pencil. I doubt the pencil was too heavy to pick up but whatever the movement was that caused it to happen was literally the last one your body could take. Like I said earlier I hate these but, “it was the last straw that broke the camels back”.

These injuries seem like they happened ” all of a sudden” but in reality they have been slowly developing into more serious injuries of the years.

The best part about Chronic Injuries is that 99.99% of the time they are completely preventable! In the Butter Knife on skin example all you would have to do would be to literally stop moving the knife over your skin and then problem solved.

Being preventable means if you take a small action now you will avoid having to deal with a big problem and take a big action later. Maybe that extra 5 minutes spent working on Thoracic Extension will keep you from having surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, or even working on your running technique a little bit will keep you from having any one of the various injuries associated with running like painful knees and backs.

Like I said earlier, these are the hardest for someone to realize because the pain is not great enough at first to affect them like a sharp knife injury would be. But with enough time it will affect them later on, when…I do not know and I am fine with telling you that, but it will happen.

So a brief recap.

SORRY THERE ARE NO COOL VIDEOS OF CHRONIC INJURIES HAPPENING.

Chronic Injury=Dull Knife

It does not happen quick and develop over time because of your movements, avoiding it now will lead to big and expensive fixes in the future, and most of all they are PREVENTABLE INJURIES!

IN Closing

I hope you have a better understanding between Acute and Chronic Injuries.

Acute Injuries are Like Sharp Bread Knives and we want to stay as far away from them as possible.

Chronic Injuries are Like Dull Butter Knives, won’t really hurt right away but with enough time can be major problems if we do not take step to prevent it.

Originally published at fitletes.com.