5 Common Calisthenics Injuries – And How To Avoid Them
Being clued up on the injuries you’re at risk of, is as important as mitigating them (through warm-ups, rest days, and stretching). And, just like any training method, there are endless risks on how and where you can get injured, so we have narrowed it down to 5 common injuries to look out for:
- Elbow Pains – medial and lateral epicondylitis.
- Shoulder Pains – rotator cuff injuries.
- Wrist Pains – sprains and fractures.
- Lower Back Pains – strains and discomfort.
- Neck Pains – soreness and tightness.
If you aren’t a doctor, these probably look like words on a screen and nothing more! But, knowing what they are and where they trigger pain is essential since you can spot injury development as early as possible. So, let’s take a look at what you need to know.
Table of Contents
- Medial Epicondylitis (Golfer’s Elbow)
- Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow)
- Shoulder Pains – Rotator Cuff Injuries
- Wrist Pains – Sprains and Fractures
- Lower Back Pains – Strains and Discomfort
- Neck Pains – Soreness and Tightness
- How Do People Get Injured From Calisthenics
- How To Prevent Injury In Calisthenics
Medial Epicondylitis (Golfer’s Elbow)
Description: Golfer’s elbow is caused by overuse or repetitive stress on the forearm flexor muscles and tendons, leading to small tears near the bony bump on the inner part of the elbow. Despite its name, the condition affects any athlete engaging in activities where repetitive squeezing or wrist flexion is involved.
Causes: Any exercises where you grip and squeeze a pole, for example, pull-ups, chin-ups, human flag, and fase grip pull-ups.
Symptoms: Pain in the inner side of the elbow, which is worsened when you flex your wrists, have a closed fist, or when it’s touched.
Calisthenics Example: Your flexors are located in the green circle, and they control how you wrap your fingers around a pull-up bar, shown in the red circle. Overdoing this gripping motion can wear the tendons attached to the inner elbow and cause pain (behind the green circle).
Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow)
Description: Lateral Epicondylitis is very similar to Medial Epicondylitis, in the sense they both arise from repetitive stress on the forearm muscles and tendons. However, the main difference is tennis elbow comes from overusing the wrist extensors, rather than flexors.
Causes: Any exercise where you use your forearm extensor muscles, for example, push-ups, handstands, frogstands, and certain dip variations.
Symptoms: Pain in the outer part of the elbow, which is worsened when you have an open palm, or when it’s touched.
Calisthenics Example: Your forearm extensors are located in the green circle, and are responsible for the extension in the fingers and wrists (red circle). While you need to extend your fingers and wrist for grip, repeatedly doing this motion causes swelling and small tears in which you’ll feel pain in your outer elbow (green circle).
Shoulder Pains – Rotator Cuff Injuries
Description: Your rotator cuff’s are a group of muscles and tendons surrounding your shoulder joint. High repetition exercises that involve shoulder rotation results in wear and tear, which triggers damage or irritation in this area. Or worse, a sudden blow to the shoulder can cause trauma and lead to injury, such as tears.
Causes: Exercises that put a heavy load on your shoulder joints, for example, muscle-ups, push-ups, tricep dips, planches, and handstand push-ups.
Symptoms: Pain is often felt at the front or side of the shoulder, which can limit your range of motion. You may also feel a popping sensation or weakness in your shoulder.
Calisthenics Example: Let’s imagine a muscle-up. During the transition phase, when you throw your elbows over the bar, a large proportion of your bodyweight rests on your shoulders. Through a high volume of muscle-ups, you wear out your shoulder rotator cuff, especially with poor form, and feel pain.
Wrist Pains – Sprains and Fractures
Description: Wrist pains arise when the extensors take a beating or are overworked. For the most part, it’s temporary and a few days of rest is necessary to reduce inflammation and ease any pain.
Sprains and fractures are more common to arise from trauma – a sudden jerk-like movement, or an overload of pressure in the wrist. A sprain is less serious as it’s a stretched or torn ligament; whereas, a fracture is an actual break or crack in the bone.
Causes: When your bodyweight puts too much tension on the wrist, for example falling from a handstand, slipping off a tricep bar, or incorrect technique of a clap push-up.
Symptoms: Pain that varies in intensity when any pressure is applied to the wrist, or when you rotate your hands.
Calisthenics Example: Paint the picture, you have fallen after holding a pair of wooden rings, and due to the false grip your wrists land like this. If you manage to catch your fall, you get away with light bruising or a small sprain. But, if you land on your full body weight, it’ll be a fracture.
Lower Back Pains – Strains and Discomfort
Description: Lower back pains range in severity – discomfort near your spine is a lot more worrying than if it was in the surrounding muscles. It usually occurs from a slack in strength or flexibility but can occur from something as silly as not doing a thorough warm-up.
Causes: In calisthenics, it’s fairly common to strain the muscles by overstretching or pulling your body too hard, for example, a tiger band. Or, trying core-dominated exercises with a weak core, leaving your lower back with inadequate support, for example, L-sits.
Symptoms: Aches and pains in the lower back, locking of the spine, and limited mobility.
Calisthenics Example: Imagine the scenario… If I were to banana handstand enough times, without warming up or ever training my core then I’d strain my back muscles and feel pain in the red circle. While a proper stretch and focused training will help, I’d still go see a doctor due to the chance of permanent spinal damage.
Neck Pains – Soreness and Tightness
Description: Neck soreness is a discomfort, pain, or stiffness in the muscles, ligaments, and structures of the neck. It occurs from tightness which worsens until you stretch it, at which point you start feeling pain. But it also develops from trauma if you jerk your neck too fast.
Causes: It’s caused by a whole load of various factors, like staring at a screen for too long. But, from our experience, calisthenics hasn’t triggered it specifically; instead, intensified existing neck soreness.
Symptoms: Pain, muscle ache, and locking of the neck – all of which restrict movement.
Calisthenics Example: If we spend the day on our laptop, and head straight into a calisthenics workout we can trigger neck pains. It starts as a nuisance, but slowly gets worse until it’s non-avoidable, especially for explosive movements such as muscle-ups.
How Do People Get Injured From Calisthenics
You can filter calisthenics injuries into two categories.
The first root of the problem is overusing muscles and ligaments. This results in excess wear and tear, which is usually wear the pain occurs. Now, this doesn’t just happen from overtraining; but, also by training calisthenics for a long time and doing high-volume reps per session.
It’s like a car tire, the more you use it the more worn it becomes. Only in this instance, the tire is your muscles and ligaments, and the car is your body. These types of injuries are the ones developed over long periods, for example, elbow tendonitis, rotator cuff injuries, or arthritis.
How quickly you develop these injuries is dependent on your age, technique, nutrition, and plenty more external factors. In fact, they can occur without you even knowing. Essentially, they’re on a ticking time bomb – and it’s up to you to slow it down!
The second common reason is trauma. In this instance, athletes fall on an unsupported body part with their full bodyweight. The pain comes on immediately but is usually masked by adrenaline – only later do you feel the full effect.
A lot of swinging on bars, shifting of bodyweight, and explosive movements are needed with calisthenics. And, though great for burning calories, they put you at risk of falling, tripping, or landing funny. These traumatic experiences are the reason bruises, sprains, and fractured bones are so common.
They are much harder to avoid since nine times out of ten they occur from accident, and it was out of your control. A freak of nature. All you can do is be vigilant, especially during demanding exercises.
How To Prevent Injury In Calisthenics
The number one most important tip to prevent injury in calisthenics is a thorough warm-up which consists of taking your joints through their full range of motion. Some of the best stretches to try are arm swings, neck circles, and upward-facing dog.
A healthy warm-up decreases your chances enormously – be it a wear and tear or traumatic injury. The whole purpose is to increase the elasticity of your muscles, so they can stretch without risking any damage.
You already know this…
It’s common knowledge you need to warm up before exercise; so, why are you asking the question? The chances are you’re either sick of being a victim of injury or trying to find an alternative. Whatever the reason, it always links to beginners not warming up correctly. So, we’ve put one together for you:
Calisthenics Warm-up Routine
- Static Stretches (5 minutes minutes):
To ease your muscles and ligaments into your calisthenics routine, begin with static stretches. They’re the type of stretches you do as soon as you wake up out of bed!- Neck stretch: 1 minute
- Shoulder Stretch: 1 minute
- Triceps Stretch: 1 minute
- Upper Back Stretch: 1 minute
- Side Bend: 1 minute
- Joint Mobilization (5 minutes):
As we mentioned, it’s essential to warm up your joints to delay wear and tear. Some great examples for you to try include:- Neck circles: 1 minute
- Shoulder circles: 1 minute
- Arm circles: 1 minute
- Wrist circles: 1 minute
- Hip circles: 1 minute
- Dynamic Stretching (5 minutes):
It’s better to do your dynamic stretches when your muscles are already a little warm since a degree of flexibility is needed.- Leg swings (forward and sideways): 2 minutes
- Arm swings (across the body and overhead): 2 minutes
- Torso twists: 1 minute
- Bodyweight Exercises (5 minutes):
What’s a better calisthenics warm-up than calisthenics! Ease yourself into the workout with some real basic movements, such as:- Bodyweight squats: 2 sets of 15 reps
- Lunges: 2 sets of 10 reps per leg
- Push-ups: 2 sets of 10 reps
- Pull-ups or inverted rows: 2 sets of 5 reps
- Cardio Burst (3 minutes):
Cardio isn’t everyone’s favorite, but it gets your heart racing and blood pumping! After this explosive cardio punch, you should be ready for a demanding workout.- High knees: 1 minute
- Butt kicks: 1 minute
- Mountain climbers: 1 minute
Wait! Two more…
We’ve seen countless injuries in the fitness world, some silly and some not. While it’s challenging to avoid the unpredictable ones, nearly everyone who suffered a silly injury would have turned back the clocks to rectify their mistake.
So, two of our top tips to avoid injury are:
Remember Your Rest Days
A lot of athletes become injured by overtraining their muscles by pushing them beyond their capabilities. It causes both wear and tear as well as traumatic injuries, especially if repeated over a long period.
Rest days don’t just allow for muscle recovery, but also to recharge your mental batteries. This is key as it prevents you from making silly mistakes, which you may have done if you were exhausted.
So, remember your rest days. 3 rest days a week is ideal, but 2 days is possible if you structure it correctly.
Be Cautious Of Your Exercise Depth
Another frequent reason injuries occur is when athletes go too deep during an exercise. For example, using parallel bars with your elbows fully bent. This can result in a small tear, or worse, pop something out of place.
The great news is – these injuries are fully avoidable!
Listen to your body and when it feels like there’s an uncomfortable amount of pressure return to your original position. Better safe than sorry!
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