How Injuries Occur

When we think about injuries, most of the time it is as simple as stress vs what a particular structure is designed to take. It can be applied to many different things. A piece of wood can only withstand so many pounds of force, and if that point is surpassed, it breaks.

You can think of our bodies in a similar way. Except we have muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons ect… All of those structures are capable of handling a certain load. We can also think of stress on an object vs time. We can handle a larger load for a short duration but over a long duration we tolerate less load. A good way to think of this would be hanging something from a rubber band. If you put something extremely heavy on the band it will break immediately (think of acute injury like a fall and broken bone). If you put a medium weighted object the band may hold initially but over time it will slowly give way (overuse chronic injuries).

In our everyday lives we encounter different tasks that put stress on our tissues. The tricky part with humans is knowing how much load we can take. With objects there are often structural ratings. Unfortunately, we do not come with such labels. And the even trickier part is we adapt over time to what we have asked our bodies to do. If you haven’t lifted 50 lbs in 10 years and then attempt it, your injury risk is much higher than someone who does that regularly. Allowing our bodies proper recovery (that is a topic for another day) is also very important.

The good news in all of this also comes from the last paragraph. And that is, that we are adaptable. We can change what our body can tolerate over time. If you hurt your back shoveling snow, you can train your body to be ready for that challenge next time and greatly reduce your risk of injury (nothing is fail-proof).