How to Pull a Muscle

Pulling a muscle can be a great way to get out of household chores. You can sit on the couch with an ice pack and heating pad while everyone brings you drinks and hands you the phone. Of course, if you don’t want to pull a muscle, you can do the exact opposite of the advice below. It’s up to you.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Poor judgment
• Unhealthy foods
• A remote control

1. Don’t strengthen your muscles. If you really want to pull a muscle, don’t do any sort of weight training exercises. This way your muscles will be flabby and weak, so when you go out to shovel snow or when you decide that today would be a great day to try running a marathon, your muscles will immediately tighten up to the point of injury.
2. Jump into a new exercise program that’s too difficult. Instead of slowly increasing your training load (starting by running one mile the first week, then increasing to two miles the second week), jump into a very difficult exercise program. This will increase your risk for injury.
3. Live a sedentary life. Avoid such activities as running, biking, swimming, basketball and other conditioning-type activities. Those activities would develop your muscle tone, and you would have less of a chance of pulling a muscle.
4. Don’t warm up or cool down. If you’re going out to jog, don’t bother stretching your muscles before or after your jogging. Just start jogging as soon as you get out the door, and when you’re done, lie down on the grass and don’t stretch. This will shock your muscles into tightening up.
5. Don’t drink water. If you drink water, your body will stay hydrated and you probably won’t pull a muscle. Your body can lose water pretty quickly when you’re exercising, and it won’t function as well when it’s dehydrated.
6. Don’t bother with good nutrition. Your bones, blood and muscles depend on vitamins and minerals to maintain their health and strength. For example, protein is required for muscle development, and iron is essential for healthy blood. If you eat refined flour and sugar all the time, you’ll pull those muscles quicker.

Tips & Warnings

• If you succeed in pulling a muscle, try icing or heating the painful area. Ibuprofen may help. It may hurt enough that you decide that sitting on the couch isn't worth the pain, and that tomorrow you will carefully start a feasible new exercise program and eat lots of good spinach and whole grains and drink 16 oz. of water for every 30 minutes of exercise. You never know.