With the weather improving and people getting more active, let's talk about your skeletal muscles (there are also other types of muscles, like your heart and inside your intestines and other places but you can't voluntarily control them so we'll deal with that another day).
A muscle connects between two bones and helps them pivot about a joint. As a for instance, your gastrocnemius (calf muscle) connects your femur (thigh bone) to the bottom of your calcaneus (heel bone) and when you flex it, it pushes the foot down in relation to the ankle joint.
A tendon is the very end of a muscle that connects to the bone. Typically the muscle is red and does most of the contraction, but the tendon is white and much more fibrous. Using the same example, if you feel your Achilles tendon, it is much more dense and less flexible than the muscle higher up on your calf.
Because tendon is less flexible than muscle, it's typically the area that gets damaged when you over-stretch a muscle which leads to inflammation, which is basically all that adding the suffix "-itis" to something means. So most muscle injuries end up being a tendonitis. It is very uncommon to have a completely torn muscle - usually it takes a big impact playing a contact sport or being in a bad accident.
What actually happens in a tendonitis is micro-tearing of some of the strands in the tendon (picture a rope being pulled very hard and starting to break some of the strings). Most of the tendon remains intact, and the area that has been damaged can usually repair itself, but your body sends pain signals out and causes swelling to occur to try to immobilize that joint to prevent you from doing more damage to it. This is commonly called a STRAIN. It can happen the same was as you would tear a piece of paper - either all at once with one strong movement or with very small tears over time, which is the usual way you will get an overuse or repetitive strain injury.
What do you do then? Traditionally the immediate treatment is RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. All of that is designed to limit the amount of swelling as sometimes your body can overreact to an injury and the swelling can prevent healing if it's too bad.
Rest - as best you're able to. It's usually harder for the muscles you use on a day to day basis but anything you can scale back on that seems to be irritating it is a step in the right direction
Ice - usually best in the first 1-2 days to help reduce the swelling. Put an ice pack or a frozen sponge on the area for about 5-10 minutes every hour if needed. After that and when the swelling goes down, a heating pad for a similar amount of time is a better idea because it can help increase blood flow and healing a little bit.
Compression - again usually for areas with swelling like the ankle or knee with an ACE bandage. But not too tight as if the swelling increases and there's not room to stretch, it can damage a lot of stuff
Elevation - ideally above the level of your heart to promote drainage of the swelling.
On top of which, often it can be helpful to take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) like Advil (ibuprofen)/motrin, Aleve (naproxen), or aspirin.
How do you prevent this from happening in the first place?
- Warm up before any intense exercise. Warm tendons are more pliable than cold ones. We've basically moved away from static stretches before exercise and dynamic ones are better.
- Listen to your body. If something is starting to hurt, scale back what you're doing if possible. Your body generally is trying to act in your best interest and it's been doing it for longer than you can remember.
That's all for now - maybe next month we'll talk about ligaments and joints.