What are your fitness ‘hotspots’ for preventing injury?

A big fitness mistake we often see when people are injured is they believe there is only ‘one’ issue at play.
If you’re feeling pain in one main area, then it’s understandable to see an injury as just that – for example, a rotator cuff issue, hamstring strain, back spasm, disc bulge/prolapse, calf strain and so on.

The bad news is injury usually results from more than one issue – this often explains why you keep re-injuring the same spot, it’s because the underlying issues haven’t been resolved.
The good news is there are ways to identify what’s going on.

Why it happens:

An injury is the straw breaking the camel’s back. The body has experienced far more than it can tolerate, so something has to ‘give’. Injury and pain is the result.

What actually goes on

We have identified several key ‘hotspots’ in the body, which commonly cause injuries.

These hotspots occur in:

• The lumbar spine (lower back stiffness in the discs)
• Thoracic spine (stiffness and tightness in the upper back segments)
• Shoulders (tightness in the subscapularis muscle in particular can cause problems elsewhere in the body)
• The gluteal muscle group (tightness in the largest muscles in the body can cause other areas to play up)
• The cervical spine (tightness in the neck joints and discs can cause injury further down the chain)

Why you end up hurt:

The whole body is connected. An issue somewhere else can affect another part of the body because the common factor between areas is your brain. The brain is a very good moderator to protect the body from imbalances between intensity (stresses against your body) and tolerance (what your body can put up with). When pushed too far, injury will often take the path of least resistance.
An issue in one part of the body may appear as an injury somewhere else. For example, we commonly treat ‘calf’ injuries which are actually lumbar spine problems; likewise, knee injuries may be due to a shoulder issue.
Unless you look holistically and consider your injury hotspots, the chances are you will miss the root cause, and suffer longer.