Muscle Imbalances and Reinjury Risk: What Most Athletes Overlook

A muscle imbalance is a situation where a group of muscles or one muscle is stronger and larger than the corresponding muscles. These corresponding muscles are referred to as agonist and antagonist muscles.

• Antagonist – These muscles provide the opposing torque in a joint’s movement. It helps control the motion to prevent injury.
• Agonist – These are the muscles responsible for primary movement. They control the action of a joint.

Premium Sports & Orthopedics wants you to think of these muscles like a storm door. You have the hinge that controls the opening and closing, but there’s the pneumatic door closer that ensures the door closes slowly and doesn’t slam shut and break the door or window.

All About Muscle Imbalances

When the muscles around a joint don’t have identical levels of activation, flexibility, and strength, a muscle imbalance occurs. Think of the muscles in your legs. Your thigh contains multiple muscles that support the knee.

If one muscle is stronger than the other, it impedes the proper movement of that joint. The knee straightens too quickly and pulls the hamstring too quickly, causing a muscle tear. 

There are three areas where muscles become imbalanced.

• Activation imbalance – A muscle or muscle group doesn’t engage or act correctly.
• Flexibility imbalance – One muscle or muscle group is tighter or less stretchy than the other.
• Strength imbalance – One muscle or muscle group is far weaker than the opposing muscle or muscles.

With any imbalance, one muscle group or muscle takes on more work than it should. That leads to strain or tears that can be difficult to come back from without the expert help of a sports and orthopedics specialist.

Common Causes of Muscle Imbalances? 

Muscle imbalances occur over time for a variety of reasons found in your daily life, training, and techniques in a game.

1. Dominant Side

Everyone has a dominant side. It’s the same idea of being right or left-handed. When you favor your stronger side, it leads to muscle imbalances.

2. Improper Posture

Having the wrong stance or posture during a game or practice puts strain on muscles. This leads to injuries caused by muscle imbalances. 

3. Inadequate Training

Improper training causes issues because you never strengthen muscle groups correctly. You also don’t have the right stance or posture. You might be strengthening opposing muscles but ignoring all of the supportive muscles behind them.

4. Reinjury

After an injury, it takes time to heal properly and regain strength, mobility, and flexibility. If you try to shortcut the recovery process, it’s going to lead to reinjury. Too many repeat injuries can ruin your career or chance to keep playing a favorite sport.

5. Repetitive Movements

Most athletes are in positions where they perform the same movements. For example, a quarterback is going to be passing a football constantly. This puts a lot of strain on the shoulder, elbow, and wrist of the throwing arm. The other arm doesn’t get as much use.

When these common causes of muscle imbalances occur, the following injuries are more likely to happen. While the actual trigger does vary, the most common imbalances for each of these common injuries are provided.

• ACL tears – Quad to hamstring or hip adductor to external rotator imbalances
• Hamstring strains – Hip flexor to glute imbalances
• Lower back injuries – Hip flexor and hamstring imbalances and weak core muscles
• Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome (knee pain) – Glute and quad imbalances
• Rotator cuff – Back to chest muscle imbalances.
• Shin splits – Ankle dorsiflexors to calf muscle imbalances

The Risk of Reinjury

After one injury, muscles are already impacted and need more work to regain their full protective qualities. Many things increase the risk of reinjury.

• Altered biomechanics – Once there’s an injury, the body’s natural response is to overwork one muscle when another is weak. This places additional stress on joints, ligaments, and tendons, leading to reinjury.
• Compensatory overload – When a main muscle is weak or recovering, other muscles go into overdrive to work harder to compensate for the damaged one. This causes fatigue and strain on the overworked muscles.
• Less stability: When muscle groups are properly balanced, joints are stable and less likely to become dislocated or sprained.
• Poor stress distribution: Unstable muscles create imbalances that increase wear and tear injuries. This can build up to acute injuries that need extra time to heal. That means, you’re out of the game longer.
• Slower recovery times – As your body heals, muscle imbalances can make it hard to fully recover. This creates a weak spot that is more likely to experience reinjuries.

Tips for Fixing Muscle Imbalances

While your instinct is to strengthen the injured joint or muscle, this isn’t going to work. Even at full strength, a muscle is at risk if its supporting muscles aren’t strengthened to create properly balanced muscle groups. To ensure you’re healing properly after an injury or ready for games and practice with strong muscle groups, you need to follow these tips.

• Build core strength – A strong core is essential when it comes to sports. You need balanced muscle groups, but you need strong core muscles before everything else will come together properly.
• Correct potential issues before an injury – A preemptive approach with muscle balance can help you prevent injuries. Even if you feel healthy, work on muscle balance from the start.
• Improve your daily habits – Muscle strength is one thing, but you also need to fuel your body with a healthy diet. Skip sugary drinks and processed foods. Ensure your diet contains lean proteins, whole grains, fresh produce, and dairy for calcium.
• Listen to your body – When you’re working out, practicing, or in a game, listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel right, stop and ask to see the trainer or schedule an appointment ASAP with a sports medicine specialist. Don’t try to work through the pain. That’s going to cause more injury.
• See an expert in muscle and joint health – See a doctor that specializes in sports and orthopedics for a detailed medical assessment of all muscle groups. If you’ve been injured, even minorly, see a specialist for a post-injury health screening.
• Seek holistic training programs – Exercises that tone and strengthen muscles are great, but consider holistic training programs that do more. Yoga helps with balance and restorative breathing, which can be just as important.

Avoid Muscle Imbalances by Working With Premium Sports and Orthopedics

Premium Sports and Orthopedics is here to help you avoid muscle injuries from muscle imbalances. Whether you are improving yourself for your first games and practices or are a long-standing player worried about reinjuries, we can help. 

Our specialists work on everything from weight loss and physical therapy to innovative healing techniques to muscle toning using EMS training. Schedule an appointment today and start working on strengthening muscles and improving your balance. We’ll help you gain strength evenly and avoid muscle imbalances.