Lockdown Injuries

Well, we are now 6 weeks back in business and it feels great! I wanted to write a quick post about lockdown injures!

One thing that I have seen a lot of since I have been back in my clinics providing sports therapy in Nottingham and Melton is that there has been a prevalence of people coming in to see me with pain that has come on in the last month or so.

When speaking with these people and delving into their activities and habits, one factor has been consistent – new routines in Lockdown!

Lockdown Routine

Now, lockdown had a major effect on everybody. Some people ate more, some ate better. Some people drank more, some exercised more…or both! But overall, most peoples routines changed.

Many people that I have seen have had their routines altered in a few ways:

• Gyms closed, so they switched up to home HIIT sessions, or took up running.
• Found they had more free time and so decided to take a positive step towards getting fit

A lot of what I have observed demonstrates how the body adapts to the loads that are placed upon it, and if we changed the kind of load going into the body to suddenly, or increase the frequency/intensity/duration of an activity too quickly, the body will struggle to adapt and thus become overloaded. With pain and injury being the result.

Scenarios

Examples of some behaviours that have lead to lockdown injuries are as follows:

I have seen a few people who generally use the gym a few time a week, repeating a similar routine week to week. As gyms closed in lockdown they found themselves beginning to complete intense HIIT sessions at home a few (or more!) times a week. These sessions involve a lot of jumping, hopping & bounding. These movements place a lot of stress on the tissues and can easily overload the body if not enough time is given to recover and adapt to the training stimulus.

It is therefore not surprising that after a month or two of this new routine, these people started to feel painful symptoms in the soles of their feet and Achilles tendons. They’re body just didn’t have the capacity to handle the new intense demands, and the sudden nature of the routine change did not give them enough time to adapt to the demands.

Similarly, some people began some great, positive quests for fitness with the new free time they had. Through well intended enthusiasm for gaining fitness, a switch from rarely running, to running 4-5 times per week creates quite a sudden change in the load being placed on the body. This sudden change and lack of time to recover and adapt will over time lead to a breakdown in the tissue…..and the result, of course, pain and injury! In this scenario, shin splints and knee pain are very common results.