Strategies For Healing After Athletic Injuries

It’s not easy to go back into your regular routine or training after suffering an injury. Most of the time, either you doubt that you’re actually ready to go back or scared that your performance may change because of the injury. But with the help of these tips, you’ll soon find yourself enjoying the same activities or sports like you’ve never even stopped.  

Check Your Diet

As cliché as it may sound, but the saying “You are what you eat” is very true. Even if you go back to the same training after you had an injury, you cannot fully recover if you’re not feeding your body well. Your body needs vitamins and nutrients, which you can never get from fast food or junk foods, in order to perform well. So make sure that you pay attention to what you put in your mouth.

Crosstrain

Different sports require different types of training. That’s true. However, for the sake of avoiding overuse injury and weakening unused muscles, it’s important that you do other activities outside of your usual training. This will help even out the cumulative load throughout your system. Aside from that, it can help you stay active even while recovering from an injury because doing a different sport or activity helps you rest the injured part while still working out the rest of your body.

Deload

Have injury but doesn’t want to completely stop training? Then just reduce the frequency and intensity of your training to avoid injuring yourself further while trying to maintain your body’s condition but still allow recovery.  

Branched-Chain Amino Acids

When you have an injury, your muscles are sore and guarded. To help decrease soreness and speed up recovery it’s best to take supplements like branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) because they have a large influence on muscle growth and recovery. You can incorporate foods rich in BCAAs too, like meat, chicken, fish, dairy products, and eggs.

Foam-Rolling

Those who are suffering from low back pain, fibromyalgia or just anybody who is feeling knots on particular parts of their body are said to have experienced improvement by doing this form of self-massage. All you have to do is take a foam roller, place it under the affected area that you wanna stretch which would be down towards the ground on the roll, use your free hand or free leg for support as you roll up and down. You may feel pain while rolling but it will help your injury heal faster and increase your range of motion.

Check Your Thinking

Your injury may be physical but your attitude towards it can affect your recovery. So if you catch yourself thinking and feeling like you’ll never fully recover or that your performance will never be the same again after the injury, stop. Find someone to talk to about your thoughts and feelings if you have to and analyze your situation. Is it your body or injury that’s really stopping you or you‘re just scared of trying again and failing?

Joint Health

Do not forget your joints. Remember that they often take a lot of beating especially with sports or activities that involve repetitive movements. So ask your doctor or trainer on how you can lessen inflammation on your joints and train without causing too much damage on them.

Functional Training

When training after an injury, it’s important to build up movements not just muscle groups. Why? Most likely than not, you avoid moving the injured part of your body as much as you can. So you could experience difficulty or moving it again will feel somewhat new to you again. Function training will then help you execute movements you typically do to your sports efficiently and safely.  

Ease Back In

It’s important not to rush into your typical routine or training after an injury. It may feel like you have a lot to catch up on but forcing yourself into an intense training right away, especially after being in rehabilitation for a long time, will only lead to frustration (because you couldn’t train or play as well as before) or worst another injury. Gradually work your way back to where you were.