Hello and welcome to my blog. This is Part Two of my Injury Rehab blog, and last week I left you with:
How do I Decide What to Do?
Here’s the tricky part! What exactly do you do when injured and in discomfort, or in pain, and do not know where to start?
Seeking help from a professional will usually result in giving you guidance on where to start, and this is something I do to help clients frequently. If you would rather figure things out for yourself, then you need to become aware of what is wrong and why it hurts. Once you know that, working out what to do next is quite easy.
The first step on your road to rehabilitation is to start slowly, and to choose an exercise, which might be a stretching exercise, or a strengthening exercise, which will help you toward your main goal.
Here’s an example.
I met a man who had broken his ankle in a cycling accident but was particularly upset that the ankle injury was derailing his Brazilian Jujitsu practise. Let’s call him Eddie.
Eddie’s cast had come off couple of weeks prior to his visit to me, yet he was still experiencing pain and immobility, which was preventing him from enjoying his usual pastimes.
The first mistake was perhaps having a solid cast instead of a removable boot, so that the muscles can be gently self-massaged and moved about. And yes, sometimes you do have a choice about what they put on your body to help heal a break!
While a cast is on, there can be a certain amount of muscular atrophy occurring, as well as muscles tensing up. Massage helped relieve that tension initially. Then we set to work building up the muscles again.
Consistency is Key
I advised Eddie to do the exercises I prescribed to be done for a few minutes every day for the first week. From that point he built up to spending 10 or more minutes every day, until such a time Eddie was able to spend about half an hour on the exercises and could switch to working on them 3-4 times a week.
The exercises started out quite simply and then increased in difficulty and intensity to continue challenging him. After a few months, Eddie was back to attending his Brazilian Jujitsu classes without any further interruption to his practise because of tightness, immobility, or pain.
Had Eddie skipped or given up on his plan, it would have taken longer to achieve his goal, or sent his pain to somewhere else in the body because it was compensating to try and make things work properly sooner rather than later.
What if You Want to Avoid Lengthy Injury Rehab Programmes?
You could take steps to make sure you body is in the best possible position it can be, health and fitness wise, to be able to withstand accidents and recover from then far more quickly than if you took a sedentary approach to life. So next week I will be talking about Prehab, what it is, and why it can be beneficial to keeping you up to speed with your active life.
Thank you for reading this week’s blog Injury Rehab – Part Two. If you would like more information please Get In Touch.
Chloe