If you love a fitness challenge, CrossFit offers exactly this! This interval training mixes strength and conditioning workouts, encouraging you to perform functional movements, like pushing, pulling, squatting, etc, at a high intensity.
Though this will whip you into excellent shape, pushing yourself athletically always runs the risk of injury. If you suffer from CrossFit injuries, do you know how to help yourself recover quickly?
Frequent Crossfit Injuries People Sustain
Certain injuries come from specific movements. Let’s look at a few common CrossFit injuries.
Low Back Strain
Lifting weights can leave the lower back vulnerable to injuries. It often occurs when people attempt to lift too much or when they lift from the waist rather than bending the knees.
This can wound the muscles and ligaments in the low back, which leads to inflammation and pain. Low back pain is the leading cause of absences and limited activity at work, making this important to heal asap.
Tennis Elbow
Overuse of the elbow can lead to this condition, characterized by swelling of the lateral tendons connecting the arm bones and pain. This can seriously limit daily activity.
Wrist Strain
Your wrists contain a ton of tiny parts that may not contain the same strength as the rest of your body. So, snapping the wrist with weights, as you do in the clean press, can injure the tendons and ligaments. This will limit activity, especially when you wound your dominant side.
Knee Injury
Your knees contain a number of ligaments and tendons that allow for movement and shock absorption from impacts. Squatting and high impact movements, such as burpees, put a ton of strain on the knees, setting them up for a number of injuries.
Patellar tendonitis affects the tendon below the knee cap, causing injury and Crossfit soreness. If you hear a snap, you may have torn a major ligament, which should be taken care of right away.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)
This condition refers to stiffness, swelling, and pain felt in the muscles after trying exercises you do not usually do. This can last for hours or even days, but DOMS treatment can reduce this timeframe.
Hernias
Lifting more weight than your body can handle can cause a hernia. This refers to a lump created when a portion of the intention pushes through the abdominal wall.
Hernias can cause discomfort and only worsen over time if not treated. Plus, they appear as bulges on the abdomen you work so hard to maintain.
4 Tips for Preventing and Treating Crossfit Injuries
Fortunately, not everybody who participates in CrossFit training is doomed to suffering these injuries. And those who do need healing are in luck.
You can take measures to both prevent and treat common CrossFit injuries. Read on for 4 awesome solutions!
1. Massage
You can use a couple of massage techniques to treat injuries related to CrossFit.
Visceral Therapy
Visceral therapy involves gently massaging the organs of the body, including the liver, intestines, kidneys, urinary bladder, etc. The idea of organ massage is to asses the relationship between them and the other structures of the body, such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
How does this work?
Each organ connects to other portions of the body through innervation, lymph portals, and blood flow. Breaking up any harmful stagnation may indirectly help to relieve inflammation and pain, as well as speed up recovery time.
This type of massage will work for any of the conditions listed above. Even the hernia can safely benefit if the therapist stays away from the affected area.
You do not need to wait for an injury to receive visceral therapy. If you participate in intense fitness programs, like CrossFit, this will help keep your body healthy enough to ward off injuries.
Sports Massage
This variation of deep tissue massage directly relieves muscle pain with firm pressure on the areas of discomfort. Sports massage targets the injured areas to help heal them.
This relaxes the surrounding muscles and increases blood flow to the injuries for faster healing. The deep pressure also stimulates sensory nerves beneath the skin to help with immediate pain relief.
You cannot use this type of massage for hernia, as it can cause further damage. When you massage sore muscles, it works best for muscular injuries. This is also how to prevent DOMS, by keeping the muscles loose.
2. Mind-Body Orthopedics
Sometimes you need to address the root of the problem in order to fix the injury. Believe it or not, this does not mean the injured ara of the body.
The root of the problem stems from where the signals for movement and sensation originate from, the brain. Mind-Body Orthopedics does exactly this.
By focusing treatment on the sympathetic nervous system, trained doctors can treat chronic pain and heal injuries, like the ones listed above. This helps to keep treatment as holistic as possible.
3. The Marc Pro
We use the Marc Pro at our facility to help speed up the pace of muscle recovery. It eases pain and prevents muscle fatigue.
This device uses electronic stimulation on very specific points to stimulate muscle cells. The use of the Marc pro before and/or after activity helps with muscle recovery.
4. Anti-Inflammatories
Sometimes injuries call for medications and or natural remedies at home, in between treatments. Anti-inflammatories reduce the swelling caused by the wound.
This allows for quicker healing. It also prevents further injury.
Inflammation serves a purpose to protect the body from invading organisms. But, it also causes more tissue damage as it cuts off vital blood flow and suffocates surrounding structures.
Certain foods will help you healthy reduce swelling. Try:
- Ginger root
- Hot peppers
- Dark chocolate
- Shitake mushrooms
- Blueberries
- Blackberries
- Grapes
- Tumeric
- Green tea
- Cherries
- Tomatoes
All of these nutritious foods will get you feeling better in a number of ways.
Start Sports Medicine Today
Though CrossFit injuries are a real possibility, this does not mean you should live your life in fear. Workout hard and smart, and know where to turn when things do not go as planned.
We want to help you prevent injuries and heal the ones you have as quickly as possible. Contact us to schedule your telephone interview.
One LOVE,
Danh Ngo PT, DPT, OCS, SCS
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Board Certified Specialist in Orthopedic and Sports Medicine
Mind Body Health Results Coach
