Returning to Exercise After Injury

Returning to Exercise After Injury

No one is immune to injuries. I know that myself only too well after years of heavy training in Martial Arts and now Boot camps. They can happen anywhere, and at almost any time. It doesn’t matter if you are an athlete or an office worker, an injury can be a major setback to any lifestyle. Anyone who has had an injury would know how vulnerable it can make you feel.

A sports injury is usually considered to be a case of bad luck and is probably the most frustrating experience for any athlete. Injuries come in different forms: sprains (ligament tissue injury), strains (muscle or tendon tissue injury), and fractures (bone tissue injury). If you have an injury you may wonder how soon you can return to your usual exercise. The answer to this question is not always easy because each person and each injury is unique.

When you get injured while exercising, you might think that exercise will be out of the question in the long term. This way, you are going to gain weight and get out of shape. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Here are a few tips:

• Different exercise routine: Modify your workouts so that you include less of the injured region. For upper body injuries, avoid lifting weights, and concentrate on lower body activities. For lower body injuries, consider upper body exercises, or even doing exercises while seated. Gradually build and strengthen the body to enable it to meet sporting demands in a controlled manner.

• Go slowly: Once you are able to use the injured part, you must gradually get back to exercise to retrain the endurance, strength and coordination. When muscles are not used, muscle power diminishes rapidly, especially when the joint is completely immobilized. When getting back to exercise the injured part, the goal should be to do more repetitions per set with less weight. The amount of weight should be increased slowly, keeping the number of repetitions on the high side. Use ice following the routine if you have pain or swelling afterward.

• Warm up and cool down: Always warm the body up prior to stretching and joint movement as this allows the blood circulation to increase and the muscles to warm. When you are done with exercising allow your body to cool down as it avoids blood pooling in the body and stretching the muscles thus reducing the risk of soreness.

• Stretch: Choosing the right type of stretching will have a tremendous effect on the speed of your recovery, while choosing the wrong type could lead to further injury and a very slow recovery. Gentle static and passive stretching exercises will help to dramatically speed up the recovery process.

• Physiotherapy: Appropriate exercises suggested by the physiotherapist will bring back the original full range of motion (ROM), strength, and stability of the body joint. He may also advise some home based exercise program to expedite the process.

• Massage: Returning to exercise is going to be painful and the only way to deal with the pain is massage. A good massage takes the body through the relaxation process and makes it easier to coax yourself into a mellow state when you’re feeling pain.

• Avoid over training: Do not increase training distance or intensity by more than 5 percent a week. Use pain and swelling to guide you on how quickly you can increase the time and intensity of exercise. This allows your body to adjust to the demands of exercise, minimizing the risk of re-injury. Ice the injured area after exercise for at least the first week or two. Consult your doctor on the devices (like elastic brace) you can use to provide a little extra support to your injured area.