All real bodybuilders, who train seriously hard, are familiar with the word intensity, high intensity actually, where there is only you facing the weight you can either finish your set or fail.
The real point of this little introduction will lead us to talk about something really important for weight lifters that most of them avoid. It’s a muscle tear. Actually, we all know if we want to build muscles and to grow their size we have to add more weight as our body starts to be used to a certain amount of weight and in order to open or tear the muscle tissue which would be repaired after your workout with mostly a proper post-workout meal (high protein meal) so your muscle recovers stronger than before. But what if things happen differently? Some guys place their bodies under so much stress that it causes injuries.
What is a Muscle Tear?
As everybody knows, muscles are responsible for all our movements and enable us to function and move; in fact, a pulled or torn muscle is an injury where the muscle actually rips. When you stretch your muscles too quickly whether you’re running or performing any other form of physical activity, an unpredictable muscle tear will take place. Muscle tears happen most likely to a body that is weak, inflexible, tired, or to a body that has not been properly warmed up before performing the exercise.
You can separate muscle tear (muscle strains in other words) into three categories (Mild or first degree, Moderate or second degree, and finally Severe or third-degree):
The First Degree Muscle Tear:
This tear may cause a little discomfort or a tingling sensation, you may not even call it a tear at all. This type of muscle tear heals itself after a short period of time. Moreover, you can keep up with your regular physical activities without any lack of strength.
The Second Degree of Muscle Tear:
It causes mostly bruising, swelling, pain, weakness and therefore makes you unable to continue your physical activity.
The Third Degree of Muscle Tear (Severe one):
This type of tear should be avoided due to its dangers, it’s actually a full tear of the muscle so the person suffering from a severe tear should stop all forms of physical activities and seek medical assistance right away. Bruising, swelling, and bleeding are often taking place.
Reasons and Causes Of Muscle Tear
It may be caused as a result of lifting weights suddenly or due to large lords on the body’s energy. Due to surprises also, tensile overload of muscles or suffering a stroke.
Faulty technique at training, not warming up properly, and cheating, by cheating I mean bouncing, wrenching, and grabbing movements.
Stressing the same joints repeatedly, it happens when you work out to failure without periodization or cycling of intensity or length of the workout. Improper breathing because lifting weights causes a short-term rise in blood pressure and holding your breath helps increase it even more.
How to Recover after Muscle Tear?
After having a muscle tear, the first thing you should do is to stop the activity that first caused it. As you are enduring the pain of the torn muscle, try to put some ice on it to reduce the swelling. Ice the injured muscle for 1 to 2 hours a day until you feel a considerable decrease in the swelling.
You should know that there is no secret or magic formula to heal your muscle tear. The main factor is time. Your muscle needs an adequate and proper recuperation time to heal however don’t forget to move the joints and muscles as soon as possible which would help your body avoid stiffness, atrophy, and weakness.
Prevention: How To Avoid Muscle Tear?
Or reduce the chances for the injury to happen in the first place. This may happen when your muscles are properly warmed up. In fact, studies have proven that a heated muscle is far less likely to get a muscle tear if it’s adequately warmed up.
Also, we know that if you want to grow your muscle you have to lift more weight but the key here is that you try to add more weight as you’re moving from set to set by lowering the number of repetitions so that your body will be accommodated to handle the lift and weights not like before (sudden overload) when the lift was much heavier and riskier to perform.
If you’re feeling that your body is in poor form, don’t try heavy weight lifting because most of the time you will perform the lift improperly which would enhance the chances of injury, muscle tear! Nothing lasts forever guys if you are constantly lifting to the extreme max, force your muscle to lift more than it’s capable of, and place more tension on it than it is already for, eventually you will endure the consequences.
