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The Relationship Between Muscle Length & Injury

Injuries to the body's movement system (muscles, connective tissue and bones) play a major role in the decision to start, or continue, exercising and living a healthy lifestyle. The prevalence of injuries related to physical activity has generated great interest and research in learning about the causes and mechanisms of injuries.

  1. Significance

    • Muscle strains are tears of the muscle tissue. They can occur in any muscle of the body. A tear causes a sudden sharp and intense pain at the point of the injury. In many cases, bruising and swelling is observed with such injuries.

    Causes

    • Muscle tearing usually happens with quick, sudden or jerking muscle contractions. They also occur frequently when fatigued muscle is loaded to capacity without proper recovery, or if the muscle is not sufficiently warmed up. Falls and drops can also cause a muscle to tear.

    Identification

    • During exercise, the body's sweating mechanism causes loss of fluid and salts. This leads to the muscles losing moisture and therefore elasticity. After long bouts of exercise without proper hydration, muscle tearing can occur within the spectrum of normal movement patterns.

    Misconceptions

    • Historically, it was thought that the length of a muscle plays the most important role in muscle injuries. This led many to prescribe flexibility training in order to lengthen the muscle, and theoretically decrease the chance of injury. Research on this hypothesis has shown varied results, but according to the journal "Physical Therapy in Sports," there is no correlation between muscle length and injury.

    Effects

    • Muscle injury is observed in muscle groups that have imbalanced strength in comparison to their antagonist muscle groups. For example, Dr. Stephen Pribut, a leader in research in podiatric sports medicine, shows that if the hamstrings are less than 60 percent of the strength of the quadriceps, the hamstrings are at a much higher risk of becoming strained. This research indicates that muscle strength imbalances are more significant than muscle length imbalances.

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