Everyone has pulled an arm muscle or experienced upper arm muscle pain at one point or another. Maybe you were doing light work in the yard or trying to lift some heavy weights in the gym – in either case, you’ve worked your arms past their point of comfort and now they’re screaming in pain.
Muscle pull or strain injuries typically occur with eccentric muscle contractions - eccentric muscle contractions occur when the external resistance is greater than the force applied by the muscle, so that the muscle lengthens as it contracts. This is also know as the negative, for example, the downward motion during a barbell curl.
Muscle injury and strain typically happen near the muscle-tendon junction, and the muscle fibers themselves are partially torn. Muscle tears can happen from a single violent force or from prolonged over strain.
Bicep Injury and Bicep Muscle Pain
Torn bicep injuries are a pain in the you-know-what! Torn biceps generally occur when your bicep muscle is fully extended and under too much strain - such as in the eccentric (negative) contraction of a curling movement. Isolation exercises such as the preacher curl can increase the chances of a torn bicep due to the strain it put on the bicep - especially when using excessively heavy weights, and not warming up properly.
Identifying A Torn Bicep Muscle
When you’re lifting excessively heavy weights or just haven’t warmed up properly, you can increase your chances of a torn bicep muscle. This generally happens when the muscle is fully extended and is unable to handle the force of the weight. When the bicep tear occurs, you will feel a sharp pain in your bicep, followed by more pain and bicep muscle weakness once you’ve put the weight down and eventually the area will bruise.
Preventing Bicep tear & Treating Torn Bicep Muscle
A bicep tear can be a very serious injury. If you experienced the conditions as described above, you should stop your workout immediately, and consult a doctor. Further stress placed on torn biceps will only worse the bicep muscle injury.
For mild cases of bicep tear, therapy program involving range of motion exercises is usually need. In some severe cases, you may require surgery to repair the tear. The best advice is to see a doctor immediately if you think that you might have a bicep tear – continuing to workout through the pain can lead to permanent damage.
Torn Triceps Injury and Triceps Muscle Pain
Much like a bicep injury, a triceps injury is something that can happen to almost anyone if they’re working out with heavier weights without proper warm up. However, knowing how to prevent this kind of injury can help keep you from missing out on training time or at least minimize the recovery time that you will need.
Identifying a Tricep Tear
Tricep tears can happen from using excessively heavy weights and not warming up properly, or simply from repetitive movements such as throwing. Just as with a piece of paper that is pulled apart, your muscles are only designed to handle so much weight and pressure. When you have torn a triceps muscle, you might feel a pop and some pain immediately during the exercise movement, at which point you will experience muscle weakness.
If you suspect you suffered a tricep tear, stop your workout immediately, and consult a doctor. In severe cases where the tricep muscle is torn off from the bone, surgery is required.
Treating Torn triceps
The recipe for healing a torn triceps muscle is rest, ice, heat, and slow movements until the pain has reduced in severity. You might also want to consider anti-inflammatory medications to help reduce the swelling in the area. However, there are cases in which you will need medical attention to help repair the muscle. In either case, you should stop working out until your triceps have fully recovered..
In the case of these kinds of injuries, the best advice is to prevent them from happening in the first place.
Always warm up and stretch prior to working out.
Make sure that you are gradually adding weight to your lifting routine.
