By Corey McMickle

Anyone ever heard of football? Maybe, even baseball? No, didn’t think so. Well these are sports which involve people who are a part of a team, much like you and I are now part of the Bainbridge fitness team. Unlike us, they are forced to play one another; where as we like to help one another. So they play their best plays barring one thing, that one thing being injuries.

Enough with the sarcasm. Injuries aren’t some speed bump you simply didn’t happen to notice while you’re driving through the parking lot. They are the person running a red light and sending you into oncoming traffic.

Injuries are one of the main factors of people having to stay home and eventually settling back to their sedentary lifestyle. Of course it’s a decision to stray away from the same way your friends are living and strive for a healthy lifestyle; but when dealing with injuries, those choices aren’t even available. I want to hit on some common injuries people are constantly asking me about and why they’re having them, and shed some light on how to deal with and avoid them.

Last time you were at the gym I can guarantee my last pay check you saw this, someone who was underneath a barbell on a bench press, who was grunting and showing not just you, but everyone else in the gym, he could lift two hundred and seventy five pounds… one time. Woohoo! That a tax write-off? Is that going to get you a free sub sandwich your next visit to Subway? Besides that, I can also promise you they had this monstrous amount of weight bounce off their chest, basically using their sternum as a spring board to give the illusion they actually lift this amount. Sternum fracture; you want one, easiest and most common way to get one right here.

How do we combat something that used to be mostly associated with car crash victims? Easy, lift proper weight. Shocker, I know, but people have this ego about them when they walk into a gym atmosphere that they must lift the heaviest thing they can get their hands on. Lifting motions should be a controlled and manageable movement to no less than three times. Can you do less? Of course you can, but hopefully it’s due to fatigue and not to a ridiculous amount of weight. So in return, if the motion is controlled there won’t be any need for the bouncing of the weight.

Another common issue that plagues striving fitness people is rotator cuff injuries.

Now this one is a sticky subject. According to a recent Men’s Fitness piece I ran across, “Up to 67 percent of the population will have a shoulder problem at some point in their lifetime, and the rotator cuff is most often the source of this pain.” The reason this is sticky is because a rotator cuff injury may have not necessarily originated in the gym. But after a person has done a hard day of stocking shelfs or lifting boxes, this will possible plant the seed of an injury not yet noticed until brought to light by some intense military shoulder pressing.

“Well how will I know if I’m a walking time bomb or not until it’s too late?” Any shoulder pain or even discomfort needs to be mentioned to your physician, they are the answer makers in determining how severe the situation truly is.

As well, this is another reason I love to accommodate work out plans which incorporate exercises in people’s workout routine that target these vital parts of our body, basically a preventative maintenance. Not that every Tuesday needs to be “Rotator Cuff day,” but if you are one of the few people who have Facebook, our hospital’s primary rehabilitation center posted an excellent example of an exercise for this particular cause, and does a great job of describing the function of the rotator cuff. Go give it a look.

There are numerous amounts of other scenarios I could touch on, but I guess I get to consider that as “job security.” I hope I’ve put a sense of emergency in the way you work out now, before they send you to an emergency… room. Stay healthy Port City.