Want To Know The Powerful Reason Why You Keep Getting Frustrating Injuries? Load v Capacity

Whenever we get injured, it’s completely natural to wonder what went wrong….. you haven’t necessarily done anything different today, yet here you are in pain and unable to do the things you want to do..  If we drop a heavy object on our foot, or get hit by a fast moving object it’s easy to know what caused our injury. As long as we don’t do that again, we won’t get that same problem again.  Unfortunately, the cause of most problems we see are not so easily identified. Clients will often say; ‘I just woke up like this..’ ‘All I did was turn to speak to my friend..’ ‘’I just got something out of the oven…’ ‘It was just a sneeze….’    The truth is that the problem has been coming for a while….. slowly and silently it has been building up until that one innocuous movement has pushed things over the edge. It all comes down to the relationship between the load you’re putting on your body versus the capacity of your body to handle this load.  Let’s have two columns here. On the left we have Load, and on the right we have capacity. Load covers any physical or mental strain the body or mind is exposed to. It covers exercise, activity, nutrition, sleep, emotional stress etc. Capacity is our ability to withstand the load we’re exposed to.  Load will change day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute….. capacity on the other hand will move much more slowly. For example our fitness levels take time to improve or get worse. If we put the body under huge physical load on one day, we don’t expect that load to be easy the next day, and conversely, if an olympic athlete takes a week off training, we don’t expect their fitness levels to drop massively despite being under relatively low loads.  The problem usually occurs when somebody takes up a new activity or fitness habit. The enthusiasm is sky high, motivation is literally bursting out of you, so you start running 4-5 times a week having not run for 5 years previously.  Let’s go back to our columns and see what that does to our load and capacity towers. Load is dramatically increased, whereas the capacity will not change much at all because as we said before, it takes time for the body to adapt to these changes in load.  The body will adapt and capacity for loading will increase…… however, if the gap is too big, as in our example here, then the tissues will not be able to recover fast enough resulting in a decrease in capacity for loading, which could eventually result in injury and/or loss of physical performance. It could come in the form of muscle strains or tears, stress fractures in bones, or tendinopathy (eg. achilles, patellar tendons  If on the other hand we decide to ease into our new habit, choosing to only run twice a week, and for a shorter distance, then the increase in load does not vastly out weight the capacity, therefore, allowing the tissues time to adapt and result in an increased capacity for loading. Muscles will get stronger, bone density will rise, and tendons become more resilient.  Let’s assume we increase physical load very slowly, what happens if all of a sudden we have a period of increased emotional stress, our nutrition suffers, hormonal fluctuations (menstrual cycle or peri-menopause), or we have trouble sleeping for a period of time? This has the potential to reduce our capacity to recover from each training session, therefore, if we don’t also reduce the load we could be at higher risk of injury.     So most injuries can be attributed to the relationship between load and capacity. Unfortunately, lots of people come away from their clinician having been told it’s due to them having one leg longer than the other, their glutes not firing properly, flat feet, patellar tracking is off, one shoulder higher than the other….. the list goes on.  Let’s take leg length….. quite often the difference is less than 1cm… the person has never had issues with it until they went from running zero times a week, to 5 times a week…… the problem is not the small leg length difference, it’s the lack of adherence, or understanding of how to progress your training load safely and sensibly.  Often I will have clients who injure their ankle, knee or low back…… they might be out of sport or activity for 4-8 weeks, and as soon as the pain is gone they want to jump straight back into they previous routine…..  When you’re relatively inactive the load on your body is reduced, therefore, over a 4-8 week period the capacity to load will decrease. So you must slowly increase the load on your body to increase your capacity until you’re back to that previous level. If you don’t, you get impatient, and try to force things……. You will lose out….. I can almost guarantee it. Just to add here that we always encourage people to stay as active as they are able during times of injury, this keeps load to a decent level, therefore, minimises reduction in capacity.  Don’t fall for these ridiculous programs that claim to be able to get you running a marathon is 6 weeks….. if you’re a seasoned runner then maybe, but not for mr or mrs average Joe. It’ll end badly.  In summary, don’t over analyse things. Look for the most simple reason for why this problem occurred. In most cases look for a relatively rapid increase in physical load that outweighs your current capacity….. Or a negative change in your nutrition, sleep, hormonal status, emotional stress that has the potential to reduce your capacity to withstand your current level of load.  The lesson is to listen to your body, reduce or increase the load as you feel able….. and be aware that if you get too far ahead of yourself, the body has a way of bringing you back down with a bump.  See you in the next video! Bye now.    https://youtube.com/channel/UCQXAka99a6MdZexeEJaMZbA https://m.facebook.com/elevatehealthuk https://www.elevatehealthuk.com/ https://instagram.com/elevate_healthuk?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRB6hF2zauI - How Chiropractic Works.    ABOUT THE HOST TOM BUTTERFIELD I have always been interested in sports, unfortunately injuries and poor training decisions curtailed my dream of becoming a professional football player. I have always been very passionate about helping people and I get a real kick out of seeing people improve and make progress towards a chosen goal or aspiration. I have been actively learning and implementing knowledge for over 20 years with the aim of improving the level of service I can offer to my clients. This has included formal qualifications such as: BSc (Hons) in Sports Sciences Masters in chiropractic PGDip in Diagnostic Medical (Musculoskeletal) Ultrasonography 15 years clinical experience helping tens of thousands of members of the public to improve their health and wellbeing. Unofficially I have digested countless information in the form of audiobooks, books, videos, seminars, and countless conversations with experts within the health and wellbeing niche. I aim for at least one hour a day. The day I stop learning is the day I pack up my stuff and go home.   CONTACT METHOD https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-butterfield-801ba515/ https://www.elevatehealthuk.com/ [email protected] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.