If you keep your workouts regular, you probably dread injuries. The more time you spend pushing your body to its maximum, the greater are the chances that you might injure yourself. In fact, if you’ve been keeping yourself physically active for years, you’ve probably already gone through unexpected body trauma. When this happens, it is difficult to comprehend that you might have to sit through at least a week, without exercising or training. Luckily, there are ways to keep yourself sane, while trying to overcome remaining sedentary.
- Stop and Think – Should you experience an injury while working out or during training, the first thing you need to do is put your activity on hold and evaluate the situation. It is a common mistake to try and push through the pain and end up turning something that could’ve been a minor disruption to your daily exercise plan, into a serious injury with serious consequences.
Stopping whatever you’re doing once you experience pain is the first thing you need to do. Evaluate the injury and consider whether it needs immediate medical attention. If the pain levels are high, visiting a doctor’s office is a no-brainer – in the worst case, you’ll waste a couple of hours. If the pain isn’t all that unbearable, going home and treating it with ice, heat, or a massage is the perfect and logical choice.
- Exercising around the Injury – In case of certain injuries, you can still get your workouts done. This is done by training areas around the injury, thus not only keeping your mental willpower going by still exercising, but also potentially speeding up the healing process, as well as maintaining mobility and strength. For example, should you sprain your ankle, you are offered a unique opportunity to improve other body parts, such as your pecks, arms, lats and the general torso area. Exercising around the injury is a perfect way to strengthen your often neglected body parts, as well as to keep yourself active, instead of remaining sedentary. Furthermore, you’ll get to serve as an example for many of your gym friends and acquaintances.
- Find a quality trainer – Here’s a pro tip: find yourself a quality personal fitness trainer – not only will they do wonders for your very workout sessions, but also probably have an advice or two when it comes to injuries and finding a proper physical therapist.
- Do not Underestimate Physical Therapy – When people experience sports injuries, they’ll do either one or both of two things:
- Quit going to physical therapy as soon as they start feeling better
- Neglect to take care of the area in question as soon as the PT is done
This is a huge mistake, because, with regards to the former, even though you might be able to, for example, walk normally at a certain point, that injured leg might not be ready for heavy physical trauma. As for the second part, any injured area takes time to fully recover – you’ll probably be able to perform exercises once the PT is done, but this doesn’t mean that the body part in question isn’t still raw, and thus more susceptible to injury.
Another thing you need to keep yourself aware of is the fact that physical therapy isn’t meant to get you back to your full strength, but rather to overcome all the injury-caused imbalances and get you back on track towards achieving your goals.
So there you have it, a couple of useful tips, when it comes to sport injuries. There is no reason not to follow this advice, in order to make for a proper recovery, as well as potentially even come out stronger than ever before.
