In both, there are body parts being strained. But with weight lifting, the body adapts in a desirable way, while with RSI the body doesn’t manage to adapt. What is the underlying difference?
In: Biology
The main difference is duration, number of reps, and availability of recovery time. When you’re working on an assembly line or some other RSI-prone job, the problem is doing hundreds or even thousands of reps a day, every day.
If you did weightlifting and did the exact same movement for 6-8 hours a day, you would get RSI from that too. Recovery is an important part of getting stronger through weight lifting. You might do 3 sets of 12 arm curls and that’s your bicep workout. And then the next day you do legs or chest and back or something.
If you did 2000 arms curls for 8 hour shifts, 5 days in a row – even if you used a light enough weight that you could actually do 2000 in a day – you’d be at high risk of RSI.
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