The Universal Cause of All Physical Injuries and How to Prevent Them

The Universal Cause of All Physical Injuries and How to Prevent Them

It's that familiar January scene. New Year's resolutions have you lacing up running shoes, hitting the pavement with fresh determination. The movement feels smooth, endorphins begin to stir, then suddenly – a sharp pain erupts somewhere in your body. This experience, shared by countless exercise enthusiasts, often becomes the reason people abandon their fitness journeys or hesitate to begin them at all. But what if you could identify the fundamental root of all physical injuries and implement straightforward strategies to prevent them before they occur?

According to movement specialist Ash Grossmann, founder of The Training Stimulus, such prevention is entirely possible through understanding one crucial physiological concept. "All injuries arise from the same thing," Grossmann explains, "and that is exceeding tissue tolerance. If you've damaged part of your body, then, on some level, a tissue has been exposed to more stress or load than it could manage. This could be acute or chronic, experienced through the sudden impact of a car crash or a repetitive strain disorder from using a mouse too much at work."

Understanding Tissue Tolerance and Vulnerability

Grossmann defines tissue tolerance as "the amount of stress, force or load that a particular tissue or body part can handle. When that is exceeded, injury happens. If those tissues were more robust, the injury wouldn't have come about." This tolerance is profoundly relative. An individual with years of strength training and athletic experience might emerge from a fall completely unscathed, while a similar incident could cause serious injury in a more sedentary person of identical age.

When muscles, bones, ligaments and tendons remain underused, they gradually weaken over time. This creates particular vulnerability when you suddenly demand significant performance from them – perhaps going for an intense run or playing five-a-side football after years away from sport. However, Grossmann emphasises that if you identify which tissues you'll be using and systematically make them more robust beforehand, these issues become largely preventable.

The Fundamental Principle of Injury Prevention

Grossmann's prescription for preventing injury is elegantly simple: "We want our tissue tolerance to exceed the demands we place on our body." While acknowledging that unpredictable accidents can occur, he highlights that many activities are entirely predictable and can be prepared for accordingly. "This is why boxers do extensive neck training – unless they're incredibly gifted, they're going to be punched in the head," he illustrates.

This sport-specific approach applies equally to everyday life, preparing for fundamental movements like walking, climbing stairs, or picking objects from the ground. By identifying likely stresses, you can expose yourself to small, controlled doses of these stresses to strengthen relevant tissues, typically through structured strength training. Over time, you can progressively overload – gradually increasing – these stresses at a rate your body can positively adapt to.

Consider the everyday example of stair climbing, responsible for hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations annually across the UK. This activity requires substantial strength in tissues surrounding knees, hips and ankles. To build resilience, begin with simple exercises like sit-to-stand movements before progressing to low step-ups and eventually weighted step-ups to higher surfaces. By developing strength in controlled environments, you effectively apply it to dynamic daily situations. Essentially, climbing stairs poses minimal problems for someone who can perform weighted step-ups with relative ease.

The Critical Role of Movement Variety

Beyond strengthening specific tissues, Grossmann recommends regularly exposing your body to diverse movements across all three planes of motion: the sagittal plane (moving up, down, forward and backward), frontal plane (side-to-side movements) and transverse plane (rotational movements). "If we move in three-dimensional full-body movements, we can learn to move our body more effectively as one integrated system," he explains. "The carryover of this into sport and life is profound."

This comprehensive approach provides essential insurance when predictable movements don't proceed as planned. "Many injuries related to deadlifts or picking objects off the floor occur when people get slightly out of position," Grossmann observes. "They might experience back spasms because they've never lifted 'badly' before. Deliberate, controlled exposure to these 'bad positions' makes us stronger within them, increasing tissue tolerance and preparing our bodies for real-world scenarios."

Whether lifting a child from the floor or moving a heavy box, perfect lifting positions are rare in daily life. Building tissue tolerance through varied movement allows you to handle objects at awkward angles without injury. Begin these exercises using only body weight, reaching partially toward the ground. As tissues strengthen, gradually add weight and increase range of motion, reaching further downward. Progressed appropriately, this method systematically increases overall robustness.

Practical Framework for Running Injury Prevention

With running remaining enormously popular, Grossmann provides specific exercises to build legs capable of accumulating miles without developing pain or niggles. He recommends incorporating these movements into regular training routines:

1. Ankle Reach
   • Goal: Ankle stability
   • Sets: 2
   • Reps: 3 reaches in each direction, on each leg
2. Stimulus Six Lunges
   • Goal: Hip mobility and coordination
   • Sets: 2
   • Reps: 3-5 per leg in each direction
3. Walking Lunge
   • Goal: Leg strength, stability and coordination
   • Sets: 2
   • Reps: 10-20 each side
4. 3D Step Ups
   • Goal: Leg strength, stability and coordination
   • Sets: 2
   • Reps: 5-10 of each variation on each leg

Grossmann offers a powerful analogy to illustrate the gradual adaptation process: "Think of your muscles and tissues as skin on your hand. If you rub your hands with coarse sandpaper immediately, your skin opens and bleeds because you've exceeded its recovery rate. But if you begin gently with fine sandpaper, building gradually over time, you develop thick, protective calluses making your hands more abrasion-resistant than before."

The common trap people encounter involves impatience for results, attempting to run too fast or lift too heavy immediately. While peak performances exist at this extreme, so does greatest injury risk. By understanding tissue tolerance, implementing progressive strength training, and incorporating movement variety across all planes, you can build a body fundamentally resilient against injury, transforming your relationship with physical activity and daily movement.