Types of Injuries in Weightlifting, Powerlifting and Bodybuilding

Resistance training may be a common pursuit for several Americans from weekend warriors to elite athletes. A minimum of 45 million Americans participates in regular resistance training. Improper training often results in musculoskeletal injury and evaluation by an orthopaedist. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission studied a cohort of Emergency Departments and identified 25,335 weight training injuries, which they extrapolated to a mean of 970,801 total emergency department visits per annum. This number likely underestimates the entire number of injuries as surveys have shown that 54% of strongmen athletes believe in self-treatment and only a modest percentage of those experienced weightlifters seek treatment from medical professionals. Sprains or strains are the foremost common sort of injury and account for 46.1% of all resistance training injuries. Additionally, most injuries are acute in nature (60–75%) but may vary in type and severity. Chronic weightlifting injuries are related to overuse and structure the remaining 30% of injuries. These chronic-type injuries are more common in aging athletes that suffer from increased rates of tendinopathy, tendon rupture, and degenerative joint disease.

Technical errors, fatigue, overloading, and dropping weights are related to the injury. the foremost common mechanism of acute injury is dropping weights, which accounts for 65.5% of injuries. Consequently, free weights are related to more fractures and dislocations than the utilization of resistance machines. In fact, 90% of the fractures and dislocations reported were related to free weights. Additionally, technical errors contributed to 31% of injuries, and fatigue or overloading contributed to 81% of injuries in weight lifters.

This review will explore injuries including pectoralis tendon ruptures, distal bicep injury, and shoulder capsulolabral complex injuries during weightlifting. Furthermore, appropriate techniques and shoulder injury prevention strategies are going to be discussed to enable the practicing orthopaedist to supply guidance to patients who participate in resistance training.

By: Jyoti Nayak

Birla School, Pilani