Hey,

I was wondering if anyone can help me work out whether what I'm experiencing is normal, something transitory or something serious.

For the last 8 weeks or so I've been visiting the gym fairly regularly for 3 to 4 sessions of between 30 to 45 minutes a session. I've been warming up on a treadmill then working with machines and benchpress, slowly increasing my reps while keeping the weight at a comfortable level.

Two weeks ago I was shifting a decent pile of lumber in the yard, this took a couple of hours to do and by the time I was finished I had severe pain in the forearms. The pain was not constant, but seemed brought on whenever I rotated my hand/wrist while having any weight in it. The lumber I was moving was not extremely heavy, but by the end of the job I was having to lay the pieces down at the destination very awkwardly because of this pain.

Since then I've found that some exercises that were previously easy to perform have become harder, some of them cause flashes of pain in the same area.

With any fitness activity I'm very aware that pain is generally not a good thing with the exception of the normal post-workout aches, I'm just not sure whether this pain is a case of me needing to build up muscular support for my forearm slowly, or what.

Thanks for reading my little essay, hope to hear back from anyone that's experienced anything like this before.

- MC

Keep off of it for a while... focus on another muscle group or your lower body. If it persists see a doctor, you may have just stressed it or you may have fractured it, we can't know.

Thanks for the speedy reply!

I plan to keep off it, but would hate to stop any upper body work. I figure that seeing as both arms are experiencing this it's probably stress and not a fracture, unless I have incredibly weak bones.

I'm thinking a sprain or a strain.

Give it a couple of weeks to recover. The general rule for sprains/strains is RICE. That's: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

If it's not better in 2-3 weeks, then go see a doctor.

That exact same thing happened to my forearms when I started working out. I wouldn't be too worried, but definitely don't put any pressure on the area for a while. I think it is just a case of your muscles not being used to the workouts yet. Once you build up more strength in the area, I think you'll be fine.

Thanks folks!

The next week is going to be ridiculously high temperatures so i'm going to be struggling for inspiration to go to the gym, but I suspect laps in the pool wont aggravate the injury so I may try that and otherwise just stick to cardio, core and lower body stuff.

Cheers