Workout enthusiasts pushing too hard
With time on their hands, gung-ho pandemic exercisers are running into injuries
The calls started in late March and early April, about two weeks after newly homebound Americans began diving into workout waters.
A Minnesota grandfather had pumped up the tires on his long-neglected bike and pedalled almost 10 kilometres with his granddaughter’s virtual gym class. His calves hurt so badly he couldn’t walk.
A working mother in Virginia, suddenly home all day, had followed online videos through scores of dips, pushups and jumping jacks. She developed tendinitis in both shoulders. For people faced with more free time but fewer athletic options, overuse injuries are the painful flip side to the noble pursuit of “quarantoning” as getting toned during quarantine is known.
Medical professionals and a footwear retailer on the receiving end of those distress calls say eager exercisers often overestimate how much of a new activity their musculoskeletal systems can handle.
And they might do it again when they return to their gyms and studios after weeks or months away, expecting to be at the same level they were in March.
“Unfortunately we’re going to see a large number of people come to us when we all get back to quote ‘normal’ again,” said Michael Ercole, a Virginia physical therapist.
“They’re going to get back into the way that they used to do things, and they’re going to get hurt.”
Health-care professionals say they are seeing more injuries from bad home-office setups than from bad fitness forays, but physical therapists in particular say they are seeing both.
Kelly Roberts Lane, a physical therapist in Mahtomedi, Minn., said a tech industry executive ended up in her clinic after buying a new treadmill desk for his home office.
Overnight, he went from long hours of sitting to walking up to 22 kilometres a day — with a little running thrown in as well. Before long, he had a strained foot.
Lane, who also fielded the call from the cycling grandpa, said she is hearing from many office workers who wanted to take advantage of the unexpected downtime to get in shape but then went too hard too fast.
“We’re going from sedentary at work to a ton of movement because we can,” Lane said, “and we’re just not conditioned for it yet.”
Shannon McCarty, a learning specialist in South Riding, Va., was a runner before the pandemic, but she injured her left ankle while hiking in March. Then came weeks of staying home.
“Seeing all these people running by my house all the time, the beautiful spring weather and the extra time was making me want to get back out there,” she said.
She started carefully: a onemile run, then a two-mile run, to test her ankle. All seemed fine, so the next time she ran, she decided to go farther.
“I was feeling good at three, and I kept going and it didn’t even hurt,” she said. “And then I got home and two hours later, my other ankle was the size of a tennis ball.”
She had torn a ligament. Fitness in one activity often doesn’t translate to fitness in another, even when the activities seem similar.
“The tennis court is closed, so they picked up a mean game of ping-pong,” Lane said of a few patients. “I’ve been fixing shoulders and elbows.”
Ercole, who runs a physical therapy practice in Northern Virginia and got the call from the woman with two tender shoulders, said another patient in her mid-30s showed up with pain in her kneecap.
She’d been very active, especially in spin classes.
“She said, ‘They shut my spin cycle studio down, so when I came home, I decided I was going to go out and start running because I needed some cardio,’ ” Ercole said.
“And she couldn’t understand why she could spin-cycle for hours, but she couldn’t run more than a mile.”
She ran, literally, into a common mismatch: Her cardiovascular system could handle running, but her bones, joints and connective tissues weren’t ready for the pounding.
Running can be especially hard on a body that isn’t used to it. The heart and lungs adapt in three to six weeks, Ercole said. But bones, joints, muscles and connective tissue require eight to 12 weeks of buildup before they have the strength needed to support that kind of pounding.
If you want to run, Ercole said, walk first for a couple of weeks, then add in a little running to your walking, then increase the amount of running. If you want to do more strength work, he said, target several different body parts with one activity each rather than starting a bunch of activities that put all the stress on one.
Start with just 15 reps, and build up reps before increasing weight.