Any type of muscle or joint injury, such as tendinitis or a stress fracture, that's caused by repetitive trauma. Repetitive trauma doesn’t have to be anything special, it can simply being overloading on a certain exercise or movement, especially if the technique isn’t correct.

Common areas for overuse injuries to pop up are shoulders, elbows, knees and hips.

Common sites are joints with a lot of range of motion. The patella and achilles tendons, the medial and lateral musculature of the elbow and lastly the rotator cuff are the majority of what we see.

We are looking for pain that started as a minor annoyance during or directly after activity that gradually increases to a constant discomfort. This pain is typically closer to the joint versus muscular pain from a tough workout or training. Often this pain is described as a burning or sharp pain during activity but as it advances it will also ache with intermittent sharp pains throughout normal daily activities.

As the irritation grows, the pain will start to linger longer and longer after the activity. Eventually if it progresses enough the pain will be a constant especially in the morning when waking or after periods of inactivity. This is a great way to judge not only the severity, but also how recovery is going.

Just as the symptoms increase as severity grows as they tissue heals, the pattern of discomfort will diminish. This isn't a linear progression unfortunately. It will be a dance trying to progress the level of activity enough to stimulate recovery without causing irritation.

Remember 1 word “prevention”. It can be accomplished in 2 ways.

Firstly, if you consistently work on mobility and stretching (especially of the above mentioned joints), your joints/muscles won’t be inclined to become inflamed and cause issues.

Secondly, the sooner you recognize abnormal pain/discomfort, the more quickly you can begin treatment and cut off the injury before it escalates.

The following concepts will help start you on the right path to treating the problem. Stretching is key and be uncomfortable but its important to remember, you SHOULD NOT feel pain. Rolling on a foam roller or lacrosse ball shouldn’t just target the point(s) where you feel discomfort, work the entire area surrounding the pain.

Strength Is key to creating resilient tissues. This is true from a strength of contraction but also on a tensile strength of the tissue under load.

Isometrics (muscle contrations w/no change in length) amd eccentrics (controlled lengthening of the muscle) have come to the forefront of research for building tendon tensile strength.

Stay tuned for some content addressing these protocols specifcally.

1) as Benjamin Franklin said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” as in take care of yourself regularly and you won’t need as much treatment if any for injury.

2) early recognition is key so we can design an intervention