A muscle strain is a twist, pull, or tear of a muscle or tendon. A tendon is a strong elastic tissue that connects a muscle to a bone. You may have a muscle strain in the thigh, lower leg, arm, abdomen (stomach), or back. Muscle strains most often occur in people who do sports, but also people with sedentary lifestyles are prone to this kind of trauma as their muscles are very softened and are easily overwhelmed by excitation in unexpected circumstances.

Among the principal causes of muscle strain, aging and muscle fatigue are principals. Also, not getting ready for exercise by moving around long enough to get your muscles warm can lead to muscle tear. Besides, a past muscle injury can lead back to muscle stress and fiber rupture, that is, if you are going back to your usual activity before your injury has healed well, you will suffer.

Stiff, tight, and weak muscles can easily tear apart on exercise. In athletes who compete only part of the year, such as baseball players, this can happen if they do not train enough before the game season starts, because they will be in activity all the time. On the other side, training longer or farther than your usual time or distance will cause the same.

The most widely known healing process consists in four steps, known as RICE, which means Rest – that is, giving time to your body to do its automatic healing process; Ice, which helps a lot since it will avoid over inflammation, Compression, which helps in decreasing swelling and gives you some support when your muscle can’t do the work by itself, and Elevation, that keeps a correct flow of blood to the heart for proper pumping.