Is the gym helping or harming your joints? Doctor says human joints are built to move, not withstand repeated overload

Walk into any gym and you will see posters about pushing limits, building strength, staying consistent. What you don’t see as often are conversations about injuries. And that’s strange, because they happen more than people admit.

Part of the reason is simple. Gym culture celebrates effort and intensity. Soreness gets worn like a badge of honour. So when someone tweaks a shoulder or feels a sharp pull in their lower back, they brush it off. They call it “normal.” They assume it will settle on its own. Nobody wants to be the person who complains or slows down.




And social media doesn’t help. You see perfect form, heavy lifts, dramatic transformations. You don’t see the physio visits or the weeks off recovering from a strained knee. So people copy workouts that aren’t right for their body, their level, or their mobility. That’s where things start to go wrong.

There’s also this belief that injuries only happen to beginners. But even regular gym-goers get hurt, especially when they skip warm-ups, overtrain, or ignore pain signals.

So maybe it’s not that injuries are rare. It’s that we don’t talk about them enough. TOI Health sat down with Dr. Ayan Roy of CK Birla Hospital CMRI to discuss common workout mistakes and how they impact joint health.

Dr. Ayan Roy says that going to a gym is one of the best choices you can make to maintain your joints over time provided you use good form when exercising. Unfortunately, the majority of people who exercise do not know that they can injure their joints because they make common mistakes when working out including using poor form, lifting weights that are too heavy for them, not properly warming up before their workout, and not allowing their body time to recover from their workouts.

"In my experience treating patients, these are some of the most common mistakes I see being made in relation to the way people workout. The human joint was created to move , however, it was not created to withstand repeated overloads without additional muscle support or proper exercise technique," the doctor says.

"Additionally, I see many individuals copy the workouts of celebrities or football stars on various forms of social media, without taking into consideration their own individual limitations. It is important to realize that what may have worked for a highly trained athlete may not be appropriate for another individual, and may actually result in the wearing down of cartilage, stress on ligaments or doing permanent damage to knees, shoulders and/or back. You must rest to allow your body’s soft tissue time to recover from your workouts; otherwise you run the risk of developing permanent damage to your joints from overworking your joints and the tissues surrounding them," he adds.

"The gym should help you develop stronger than ever before, while keeping you free from injury. It is imperative that you perform exercises with proper body posture and form, control so that you do not place too much weight on the body while in control of your movements; especially when developing strength in your joints. Listen to your body and understand that pain is an indication that something is wrong with your body; not a sign of a challenge. Exercise with proper direction and balance will benefit you throughout your life," he urges.

Medical experts consulted This article includes expert inputs shared with TOI Health by:

Dr. Ayan Roy, CK Birla Hospital CMRI

Inputs were used to explain how mistakes during gym workout can affect the joint health.