Overuse injuries

Do these sentences sound familiar? Perhaps you or a family member have already experienced similar situations. They leave you perplexed as to why pain suddenly appears for no apparent reason.

Differentiating between an injury and pain:

Indeed, we often confuse the following 2 concepts: Injury and pain.
During an accident, for example, a fall on a bicycle, there will likely be injuries. Whether the injured tissue is the skin, a muscle, or a ligament, this lesion causes pain. Especially at the very beginning, during the inflammatory reaction, when the body brings the necessary chemical ingredients to promote tissue healing.
This phase of significant pain usually lasts 48 hours to 4 days. Then the pain gradually decreases in the following weeks depending on the tissue to be repaired. We understand from this example that injury = pain. But you probably already suspected that.

What might surprise you more: We absolutely cannot assert the opposite. Pain ≠ injury.
For example: a severe headache does not mean that your brain or skull is broken or damaged. We frequently experience pain without injury.
Not convinced? Think of a famous 'brain freeze' when eating a popsicle too quickly... unpleasant yes, but nothing dangerous there!
The perception of pain serves as a warning signal to our body to alert us to a perceived potential danger. Often, it is our body's way of telling us that the internal balance is broken. In other words: it is overloaded, we have given it more stress (physical or mental) than it can tolerate in the current circumstances.

How does an overuse injury occur?

When an overuse pain occurs, you have to ask yourself questions.
Are there things that stress my body more than usual lately?
An overuse injury can occur when increasing a sports activity (longer duration or intensity = more shocks, twists, tension)
Unusual demanding one-time activity: doing spring cleaning, moving, shoveling
Unusual sustained position: standing at a concert, crashing all weekend on a couch
Change of posture: car, office, ...
Psychological stress

What factors predispose you to an overuse injury?

Are there certain factors in my life that make my body less resistant to stress lately?
Illness, lack of sleep, change of diet, sedentary lifestyle, loss of physical fitness (e.g. summer vs. winter), frequent alcohol or tobacco use

How to control overuse pain?

The key to controlling overuse pain: quantifying mechanical stress.
We can see the ability to manage the amount of stress applied to your tissues during sports and daily activities as a budget. If your body is less resistant lately, you have a smaller budget and you must adjust your activities accordingly to avoid finding yourself in a risk zone where you stress your body more than its tolerance, which would lead to pain.

When you add stress to your body (e.g. increasing your running distance), you must do it in small, gradual and slow increases to give the tissues time to create the necessary adaptations and increase their resistance (and therefore your 'budget').

To learn everything and become a master of quantifying mechanical stress.

To know what to do in the event of an overuse running injury.

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