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Microtrauma generally refers to minor injuries caused to the body. This includes but is not limited to minor tears of muscle fibers that cover around the muscle and the connective tissues. Often times, most athletes and sportsmen suffer from injuries termed as microtrauma, and there are even instances of sports persons giving up playing for the same reason.
In the field of sports medicine, microtrauma is the most widely studied and researched subject. Although harsh, it is but truth that training or exercises can be sometimes harmful to the body, if not performed properly or if you over do it. Rigorous workouts or excess time spent in the gym could lead to microtrauma rather than doing any good to you.
There is no specific training in question that actually leads to microtrauma and one indication of the microtrauma is excess production of cytokines (which are hormone like biocompounds) and these are perfect indicators to you that you going to an over-trained phase and/or suffering from microtrauma. The cytokines also act as mood changers and the more they are produced the more will be the altered mood (to the worse or depressed side).
This microtrauma is more popular amongst the trainers and sports physicians as adaptive microtrauma- as because the bones, the muscles and other connective tissues become adapted to the microtrauma and manifest as increased sizes.
Training harder is never good even if microtrauma does not occur, because it is a stimulus-response mechanism that allows the body to build larger density muscle, which can deal with the stress loaded on it. That is, when the stress resistance is increased it can prove detrimental to the body.
Microtrauma can stress the bones, ligaments and the tendons. Increased lubrication in response to microtrauma to the bowels is a key factor to the beneficial effects of dietary fibers in increasing bowel robustness, although this condition is not the same as muscular hypertrophy. Microtrauma to the skin can also cause skin thickness as in the case of running barefoot, this occurs due to skin replication at sites under stress where cells undergo compression or abrasion.
Low-level inflammation is yet another result of microtrauma that neither be felt nor seen. This condition occurs in the muscle, vertebrae, ligaments and the discs. They can develop singly or can be combination of all. Constant sustenance of microtrauma can lead to serious conditions if it is not given enough time to recover. So just give a thought while you become addicted to lifting those weights or you cant wait any longer to step on to the treadmill!
