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No doubt about it, CrossFit is going to work some muscles you haven’t worked before. Or at least not in the way you are now. And with that will be soreness, a tweak or two and probably some set backs. The question becomes: What do you do when it happens?
Most of the time, minor injuries are a result of a muscle group or connective tissue (think tendon or ligament) being strained beyond the normal, beneficial break down that exercise causes.
When you are strength training, whether you’re using a barbell, dumbbell, body weight or other piece of equipment, you are creating small tears in your muscle fibers. After your training is over, your body gets to work repairing these muscle fibers, thus building strength in the process of repair. You cannot add any muscle fibers to your body. But you can use more muscles fibers depending on what kind of weight you are lifting. That’s why a heavy lift day requires rest between sets and leaves you feeling different than a high volume, low weight workout.
In the initial months of CrossFit, you will have some muscles that will need to play “catch up”. They haven’t been worked before and now they need a little longer to strengthen so you can work with all your pistons firing. In the process, these muscles take the brunt of the tearing and hence need a longer recovery time. If you aren’t giving that particular muscle group time to repair and heal, you will feel it in the way of soreness and pain. If continued, this will lead to an overuse injury which as described means the muscle is over tired and needs additional time to heal.
This effect can also happen around your joints. An elbow that keeps acting up. A knee that hurts in a particular movement or angle. Typically this is caused by inflammation in your connective tissue around that joint caused by over using the muscle groups. Because connective tissue isn’t as flexible as your muscle bellies, the constant pulls on that muscle group will agitate the tendon. This leads to tendonitis of the joint and more pain.
To prevent this or manage your current pain, we recommend these strategies:
1- Identify exercises that aggravate the muscle or joint and eliminate them until pain subsides.
2- Get plenty of rest, protein and water to help aid the healing process.
3- Apply COLD for 20 min to reduce inflammation after a workout.
4- Apply HEAT for 20 min to bring blood flow to area for healing.
5- See your doctor if the condition persists beyond a week.
6- Let your coach know of any areas of pain, so you can work around them.
As fitness professionals our aim is to provide you with programming that is Balanced AND Challenging. It is a delicate balance between just enough Butt Whooping to feel the next day and Ouch, That’s Too Much! but we do our best to find that balance. Even still, some tweaks will occur. Don’t be shy about letting us know and backing off when necessary to let your body recover.
Our goal is long term fitness- fitness for a lifetime! Let’s work together through the initial bumps to make that a reality!
See you in the gym,
Brian and Priscilla
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