How to manage longterm Injury.

What kind of long term injuries am I talking about?

Well really it can be any kind of injury that you have been dealing with for a longer period of time. Often it is caused by repetitive movements such as static positions like sitting down too much. Or dynamic movements like running. Most of the time people will say they have a bad back, sore knee, shoulder, sciatica and neck but the list can go on. The type of injury/niggle would be something that you have learnt how to deal with over time by perhaps avoiding certain positions or activities, which is of course sensible in an initial stage of an injury. There is a better way to manage longterm injury than just avoid everything that hurts. 

We can recover from a lot of injuries but the longer we have an injury the longer it will take to recover generally speaking. And yes sometimes we might not be able to recover to a 100% but we can get pretty close. however there rarely is one magic thing that will solve the injury for you. It will take a bit of discipline from your end to do what is required to manage the injury and your body. 

How to recover from long term injuries?

Let’s take it from the beginning, first of all it’s always good to see a physiotherapist when you experience some sort of pain that doesn’t go away. What perhaps baffles people the most is that to recover and manage the injury you need to put load on it like strength work, not avoiding putting load through it. 

• First that might be increasing range of movement and flexibility and mobility.
• Then you would introduce lighter strength exercises to condition the body and the specific area.
• Lastly it would be to put more load through it to build some good strength.

Just to clarify you won’t spend 5 days a week in the gym rehabbing but it will involve you doing some rehab exercises every day at home for some time initially.

 How to manage long term Injuries?

Let’s say you do all that work to get better and once you are happy you go back to your normal ways thinking finally that’s over, most likely it will come back. Most people can manage longterm injury and be pretty much symptom free with strength work and a sensible training load. Yes, sometimes there might be a flare up but that should be pretty straight forward to manage.  

It’s also at this stage I see many of my clients. They have either had an injury for such a long time that’s normal to them and I have to send them to a physiotherapist or I start with them just after they have finished physiotherapy. Either way we build on what we have to work with in a sensible way. Making sure that we are focusing on the long term effect and that it should be realistic to achieve.