Are injuries obstacles in you training?

To feel your injuries are obstacles in your training can be extremely frustrating. The good thing is that in most cases we can reduce symptoms to even get symptom free. What you need is  good physiotherapy, the right type of training, time and patience. 

What classifies as an Injury? 

You might think that my sore shoulder is not an injury if you compare it with a broken foot.However if it gives you pain and an uncomfortable enough feeling during certain movements/exercises I would say that is an injury or a beginning to one.  Don’t worry, like I said  most injuries and their symptoms can be well managed. 

Back to the topic of does you injury produce any obstacles in your training?.

First of all don’t push through bad pain, that won’t help you in the long run. I know it can be frustrating when injuries are obstacles in your training. In my experience you can adapt most exercises to make them less irritable on your injury. Making sure the technique is on point and safe is a good first step. Take help from a professional here that has experience working with managing injuries and training. Great if they can work together with a physiotherapist. The good thing is that almost all injuries heal from putting load through the injured area or tissues. Avoiding loading the area won’t reduce symptoms in the long term. Of course when I say put load through doesn’t mean max capacity in strength right from the start. 

When I work with injured clients I have to be quite creative to make sure we are activating/loading the problem area but also areas around that will help support the whole structure. Here is an example. A client has severe osteoarthritis in the knee and can’t squat because it creates too much symptom and inflammation in the knee. We want to still work the muscles around the knee but with less load and with exercise that is tolerated. The reason we want the leg muscles to be as strong as possible under the circumstances is that it will reduce the impact that goes through the knee and worsens the symptoms. As you become stronger in and around the injured area you will be able to gradually take more load and move over to exercises that you could not tolerate in the beginning. 

Why do we want to load an injury?

Well in most cases it is because the area and the supporting areas around it is weak from the beginning. Another side effect from being injured is that the brain tells the muscles to stop working because it can sense danger. Makes sense right? Yes if it’s a broken ankle or the moment we tear a muscle. But It doesn’t help when the injury gets worse with us becoming weaker and also stiffer. After the initial healing process of a broken ankle comes mobility which is a form of load and then begins the process of strengthening it. Are injuries obstacles in your training? often people come out stronger then when they got them.

Hope I made some sense here? I tried to keep things simple and compressed explaining a big topic in a short piece.