Exercise goals means something different to everybody. Whether you workout to get stronger, boost your immune system, or simply feel more energized, there’s nothing more frustrating than having to stop your training routine because of injury.
If you’ve hurt yourself and have to take a break from working out, try to see your recovery period as an opportunity to reconnect with your body and reaffirm your goals. These tips will help you get back to moving your body.
1. Understand The Cause
Some injuries are dead simple: you tripped while stepping out of the elevator at work (cringe!) or you twisted your ankle when your stiletto heel broke. Fair enough. But the large majority of injuries that take people out of the gym actually happen in the gym, or as a result of over training, or improper form.
If you’ve been injured, take this opportunity to carefully examine every aspect of your workout routine, from warm up to cool down. Have you been pushing yourself too hard? Do you focus too much on cardio and neglect your strength? Could you have prevented your injury if you’d invested more time on improving your flexibility? You may be able to work this out yourself, but a visit to your physiotherapist, or enrolling a personal trainer, could enlighten you further. Once you understand how your injury happened, you can take steps to avoid the same thing happening in future.
2. Get Professional Support
Unless you’ve broken or torn something, most injuries are at their worst for the few days following the initial incident and gradually ‘get better’ on their own. Once the swelling has gone down, or you’ve loaded up over-the-counter pain-killers, it can be tempting to dive back into exercise and hope for the best. If you do this, you might be lucky and slip back into your old routine, but you could also end up injured again, possibly more severely than before. If you want to recover properly and avoid relapse, you’d be wise to see a physiotherapist throughout your recovery period. Once you’re back in the gym, a personal trainer is highly recommended, as they will be able to identify and help you fix those bad habits that got you into this situation in the first place.
Seeking a physiotherapist can be prohibitively expensive, but investing the extra money will pay off when your injury is kept at bay long-term. If your injury occurred at work, you may be able to cover your recover expenses by making a personal injury claim. To ensure you’re not left out of pocket, your best bet is to seek a legal service with no cost unless you win.
Whether you’ve torn a ligament, sprained a joint or tweaked a muscle, an injury can be the most frustrating thing in the world for a motivated gym-goer. These tips will help you get to grips with the full extent of your injury and take steps to recover properly. If you take this opportunity to understand where you’ve been going wrong, you’re less likely to end up back on the couch in future.
