What Injuries Can Occur
During Aerobics?
If you are careful about warming up, wear decent shoes,
and don’t try to impress classmates with your athletic
prowess, injuries from aerobics are unlikely.
Most injuries
come from either failing to warm up properly, working
out barefoot (once trendy, but now we know better),
or overextending oneself in a misguided effort to get
fit faster than is reasonable.
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If you always warm up properly but still experience pain
or discomfort in your feet, legs, back or neck, you
should speak with your instructor.
It may be that you
need to back off in intensity, or that you’re performing
some of the exercises incorrectly, causing strain in the
various parts of your body that are being wronged.
Everyone has weak places in the body, especially people
over the age of thirty, and aerobics may remind you of
those old football or ballet injuries. Cartilage may
crackle, tendons may grow tender as injuries from your
past are reawakened. If you have pain in your feet,
knees or hips, check your shoes with an expert
athletic-shoe salesperson. If you don’t discover
something in your shoes that can remedy the situation,
you may need to see your doctor for an evaluation:
osteoarthritis causes joint pain, as does rheumatoid
arthritis. Old, forgotten injuries may become sites of
irritation. You may have shin splints or nerve pain. Or
you may just have some sensitivity that doesn’t tolerate
aerobics well: some joints do not take kindly to being
bounced upon day after day.
If you are injured during aerobics, you may decide to
switch to water aerobics either until the injury is
healed or for good. It is extremely difficult to get
hurt in water aerobics, but you can derive all the
benefits of aerobics without bearing weight.
The most common aerobics injuries are related to muscle
strains. If you feel like you’ve pulled a muscle, use
RICE to speed you on your way to recovery. First, give
the injury rest: don’t exercise it the next day.
Use ice to reduce the swelling. Reducing the
swelling also tends to alleviate pain. Ice the area for
ten to fifteen minutes every couple of hours for the
next 24-48 hours. Compression is also useful: it
supports the affected joint and eases pain. Elevation is the final part of the RICE acronym: put your foot or
leg up whenever you can, with a pillow underneath if
that’s more comfortable.
If you overdo it and the pain doesn’t go away in a few
days, get thee to a doctor. Don’t expect your instructor
to diagnose your injury: by law, aerobics instructors
aren’t allowed to do more than give the most basic
advice (usually RICE). Most of the time, you’ll have
strained a muscle or overworked a joint, but it is
possible to create conditions that your body will react
to by developing a chronic condition that can cause you
a lot of trouble if it isn’t caught right away. Nip
injuries in the bud, give the acute ones plenty of
recovery time, and take the stubborn ones to your doctor
for advice. |
