Best way to manage an injury while training.
Anyone who is serious about their training and exercise will, unfortunately, experience an injury at some point and the old saying “no pain, no gain” may not always be the best advice. This blog is going to cover some tips you can use to continue training while recovering from an injury.
We train as hard as we can and push through those niggling aches and pains and sometimes, they do eventually turn into injuries. It happens to the best of us. What is the best course of action? Learning to listen to your body and following the tips below will help you recover faster, spend less time away from training, decrease the severity of the injury and prevent it from recurring.
First things first is if you think you have in injury don’t guess and don’t ask the internet. Unfortunately, the internet is full of misinformation or accounts of “personal experience”, which may or may not be applicable to you. Seek out the advice from a primary health care provider such as an osteopath or physiotherapist for a proper diagnosis and treatment plan. They are the professionals and it is their job to advise and guide you in the right direction towards recovery. This may involve manual therapy techniques, exercises or referral for further investigation if required. Seeking professional help early has the benefit of finding the source and cause of the pain right away and implementing the appropriate treatment plan instead of trying to figure it out on your own, saving you time and money in the long term.
Just because you are injured does not mean you have to stay away from the gym. A very common mistake people make when they are injured is to stop training altogether, this can often make an injury worse and increase recovery time. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may still be able to continue training within a modified manner. This may just mean you have to avoid performing certain exercises or postures. By continuing to train while avoiding aggravating movements helps slow down deconditioning and maintain all the benefits of exercise. Some studies have shown that even training one arm or leg leads to an increase in strength in the untrained limb via a mechanism known as cross-education.
While injuries are frustrating and stop us from doing the exercises we enjoy, it does give you us the chance to be creative and work on areas we may be lacking. Just because your shoulder hurts does not mean that you can not work on strengthening your knee, working on rehabbing an old injury or doing more prehab exercises to prevent future injuries. Strengthening known areas of weakness, whether it is a skill, muscle group or site of reoccurring injury, will significantly help to improve your overall performance and make you more resilient in the future.
These are just some quick and simple tips on how to train and manage yourself with you have an injury. While it is frustrating dealing with injuries it is important to manage them properly to ensure a quick recovery. It is better to get on top of your injuries or aches and pains in the early stages to ensure you save time and money and return to your training as quickly as possible.
