By Dr. Chris Leib and the Exercise Geeks

For the past decade I have had the opportunity to work with a variety of populations experiencing a wide array of injuries. In this time, one of the most meaningful lessons I have learned is that injury, although it may have its inherent negative consequences, has great potential as a teaching tool for improved movement quality and behavioral change.

We live in a society that promotes quantity over quality and routine over mastery. This makes the average exercise enthusiast a prime candidate for overuse injury due to excessive volume of low quality movement patterns. An injury is the body’s way of telling you to stop and rethink your exercise strategies – and hopefully put increased focus towards movement quality.

In a moment, I will lay out several ways in which we can use injury as an opportunity to create safer and more effective exercise strategies. But before we get into how injury can be helpful, we first must understand common reasons why we get hurt.

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