How Do Injuries Occur?
Pain and injury can be confusing, and when we don’t have a specific mechanism of why we got injured can make it even more confusing.
For these instances, like I like to use a glass/cup analogy.
Imagine you’re a glass of water and you keep dropping rocks in the water until the water level reaches the brim of the glass. At this point, the smallest pebble could cause the glass to overflow. When the glass overflows that’s when we get pain.
This is what happens with our bodies and pain. The glass is our capacity and when we exceed that capacity, pain or injury occurs.
Now the rocks could be any number of things. They could be the exercises or movements that we’re doing if we’re doing too much or doing more than we’re prepared for. They could also be things like stress, not enough sleep, poor nutrition, or poor hydration.
We often just keep filling up our glass until we’re at our breaking point and then something so small can send us over the edge. That’s why you hear people say things like, “All I did was bend over to put my socks on” or, “All I did was sneeze”.
Now, what can we do to fix that or prevent the water from getting to that level?
I tell people we have two things we can do.
We can take water out of the glass.
We can build a bigger glass.
To take water out of the glass we want to focus on things like proper recovery, good social habits, and being smart with our training and programming.
In my office, I focus on helping my clients build a bigger glass. That means we need to strengthen and build up our capacity for the load we’re putting on our bodies. For example, if someone is having pain with bending forward, we’re going to work on building our capacity in that position by working on things like bent-over rows and deadlifts.
Pain can be extremely confusing, but I hope this helps you better understand it a little. If you would like help to better understand it or help build a bigger glass then let me know. I would be more than happy to talk with you about how I can help.
If you’re interested in working with me you can send me an email at resiliencechiro@gmail.com
Talk soon,
Andrew
