Why muscle tears happen – and what you can do to prevent them

Muscles are biological powerhouses, capable of truly incredible feats. You only need to look at the world’s strongest man, capable of dead lifting over 500kg, to see what they can accomplish.

While our muscles are capable of performing monumental tasks, asking them to do this can raise the risk of them tearing. Watch any episode of World’s Strongest Man, and you’ll see what I mean.

But it isn’t just strongmen and powerlifters who may experience this problem. Even the average person can be at risk of a muscle tear, from playing sport or simple day-to-day habits – though some muscles are more prone to injury than others.

Upper limb

Our biceps brachii is a muscle of twos. The name itself refers to it being the “two-headed” muscle of the arm – one head is long, the other short.

The bicep is an important muscle in flexing the forearm at the elbow, as anyone who spends their time doing curls at the gym can tell you. But this isn’t its only role. Biceps also makes it possible to rotate our hands and forearms so that we can perform a range of simple tasks – such as holding a bowl of soup in our palms.

The narrow tendon of the long biceps head makes it the easiest part to tear. In elderly people, a...

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