Exercise is a great pastime and can be enjoyed through a multitude of avenues. Whether you’re running, hiking, lifting weights, or training for an ironman, there are a ton of ways to enjoy yourself while exercising. That being said, it can mentally tax to have your workouts put on hold for something as annoying as tweaking one of those vital muscles to working out. There are tons of muscle and muscle groups within the body, and there are also tons of ways to strain or overuse these muscles. Our sports rehabilitation center in Huntington has specialists seeking to remedy these unfortunate circumstances when utilizing these muscles and muscle groups. For more information on how you can get in contact with one of our Sports Rehabilitation in Huntington about muscles and remedying muscle injuries, visit our website and contact us today!

How Strains Can be Caused?

We’ve mentioned before how pesky, and common muscle strains can be, especially for athletes dealing with intense activity. At Island Sports Physical Therapy, one of the top Sports Rehabilitation in Huntington, we dedicate ourselves to injury recovery and prevention, so getting over the hump of a strained muscle is secure in our hands! That being said, muscle strains are typically caused by repetitive motion in high-intensity environments. That means continually making the same movement adds more tension and weight to a particular muscle in the body; this causes a slight strain in the muscle. 

The strain starts to ramp up as added stress is applied to the muscle through a high-intensity activity that causes the muscle’s tweaking sensation. Activities such as high-intensity weight lifting with the unsatisfactory form or manual labor with the same poor form are often the cause of these muscle strains and pulls.

Preventing muscle Strains

Now that we understand the cause of these pulls, let’s talk about some preventative measures we can take to avoid muscle strain. The most common and obvious measure would be stretching before and after the high-intensity activity being performed. This would be easily doing some stretches for the most commonly pulled muscles to induce flexibility and push a healthy recovery. The next measure recommended by the professionals at our sports rehabilitation center in Huntington is to ice the area in which the activity was projected onto as to avoid pulling the muscle. This means taking an ice pack or filling a bathtub with ice and cold water. Plunging yourself in an ice bath may sound chilly, but soaking the muscle in cold water optimizes the natural repair features of your body to repair torn muscle earlier and with more efficiency.

Common Muscle Strain and How to Recover

The first step to muscle recovery is determining the severity of the injury and understanding where to go from once you’ve located how severe your muscle pull or tear may be. The grading system on how severe a muscle pull may be functions on a scale of four separate grades. When experiencing pain labeled in the categories of either 3 or 4, seeing a physician or physiotherapist is highly recommended. The symptoms in these higher categories include experiencing localized pain that is unmanageable, sharp pain, and a snapping feeling and or sound. The lower types, that being either grades 1 or 2, typically see symptoms ranging from acute inflammation in the area to an aching muscle firmness in the localized onset of muscle soreness.

There are familiar places located in the body that are more susceptible to strain their others are. This is because this muscle may require more daily use than other muscles depending on the life you lead, causing more chance of strain when performing high-intensity exercises. Our specialists at our sports rehabilitation center in Huntington, NY, offer one-of-a-kind recovery and advice for dealing with these common muscle strains and injuries. That being said, we’ve compiled a list of the most common Muscle strains and how to recover from them:

• Bicep: Bicep strains are typically caused by the muscle’s usual overuse, causing a sharp pain localized in one or both biceps. Our specialists in our sports rehabilitation center in Huntington typically push for immobilizing the muscles that seem to give our patients the most trouble. This can be done using a string or resting the affected bicep on an elevated surface to ensure it’s resting.

• Back: the back is a complicated group of muscles that needs to be prioritized when there is any light straining causing any semblance of pain. When resting the back to keep it from overloading more than it already has, make sure to lay flat on your back. There Is little to no use of any back muscle present while resting; ice is also recommended when immobilizing the back to ensure a speedy recovery.

• Shoulder: Like the bicep injury, one or both of the shoulders can be strained at the same time, sometimes making it challenging to immobilize and rest the shoulders due to their inherent bodily position. However, this can make it easy to lie down and apply both ice and pressure to the muscle to stop the inflammation and support a more efficient recovery in the shoulder area. Applying this ice and pressure daily for a couple of minutes until the swelling stops is a great way to ensure full recovery of the muscle

• Hamstring: the techniques talked about above are also applicable to the hamstring muscle. At our sports rehabilitation center in Huntington, we apply both ice and pressure to the wound while also making sure that you involve other things to optimize your recovery. This can be hydrating or allowing further pressure or ice multiple times daily.

Contact Us For Sports Rehabilitation in Huntington

Now that we understand how muscle strains can be recovered from and how they’re presented, we can see why it is essential to living stress-free without tearing. Ensuring your success in recovery is critical. We recommend that you understand the grade of severity for your injury, hydrate, and apply pressure and ice to the source of inflammation to recover safely and thoroughly. When you need trustable and qualified sports rehabilitation in Huntington, contact us.