By Toni Cicone
See the issue: May 2008

You can spend hours resistance training in the weight room, but you can never completely eliminate risk of injury. Here is a breakdown of the two major types of injury, with symptoms and examples of each.

According to the National Institutes of Health, a sports injury is any harm or damage your body sustains while playing sports. Some injuries are accidental, while others result from lack of conditioning, failure to stretch or warm up or pushing yourself too hard. There are thousands of possible injuries, but they all fall into one of two categories—acute or chronic.

Acute Injury
What it is: an injury that suddenly occurs during activity 
Symptoms: sudden and severe pain; swelling; extreme weakness and tenderness in an upper limb; inability to put weight on a lower limb; inability to move a joint through a full range of motion; visible dislocation or break in a bone
Examples: sprained ankle, fractured hand, strained back, concussions

Chronic Injury
What it is: an injury that results from overuse of an area of the body
Symptoms: pain in a muscle, tendon or joint during activity; dull ache while resting; swelling
Examples: stress fractures, shin splints, jumper’s knee and tennis elbow

You should never play through symptoms of an acute or chronic injury. You might be conditioned to think “no pain, no gain,” but playing with a painful injury can keep you on the sidelines much longer than if you had dealt with the injury right away.

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