Training when you have an injury

Sprains, strains, full tears even breaks. If you’re training regularly and working hard chances are at some stage in your life, you are going to experience an injury.

There’s a very fine line between pushing yourself just the right amount so it leads to training progress in strength, conditioning and mobility and not injury, burnout and constant fatigue.  But when you do have an injury, what you need are the right tools and the right approach to help you deal with the frustration, anxiety and possible depression that can result from an injury and this is what I will present here.

1.      Get it assessed – this is the obvious first step you need to take especially when it’s an acute injury e.g. you slipped and fell, could feel a muscle tear on a movement you were doing etc. Injuries or pain while they don’t stop you from performing regular training can turn chronic (which will take a longer time to heal) if you don’t get them seen to sooner and follow a plan of action to remedy the issue.  A good physio or physical therapist is needed here and my go to guy in Dublin is Doug Leonard (087-6867372, Based near us in Sandyford).  

2.      Keep moving – If your injury is not completely debilitating e.g. post-surgery operation, a bone break or full muscle off the bone tear, then keeping up some form of regular exercise is going to help you both physically recover and will be vital for your mental health. The best approach is to go into a typical training session and just perform a structured warm up. If you were not previously doing a structured warm up that placed a big emphasis on improving ankle, hip and shoulder mobility then this could have been one of the reasons you’re in pain right now. That first 10-20mins of your session should show you how much you can still do and from my experience with various injuries most people can still do light cardio, core work and a truck load of directed mobility work while injured. There is a core index here you could use as a guide - https://www.dominicmunnelly.ie/new-blog-1/2016/11/18/mid-line-stability-exercises . I’ve found the use of a hot water bottle placed on injured areas useful. This is not recommended if the area is still swollen but once swelling has gone down then apply to the injured area to help enhance blood flow which can speed up recovery rates. Doing high repetitions at very low loads of movements that target the injured area can help in a massive way. For example, if you had a hamstring tear then doing 50-100 leg curls for really easy reps will massively enhance the blood flow into the injured site and work to regain strength in weakened areas. Access to an electro-stim device such as a Marc Pro or Complex can help for recovery in general and in an injury situation. These can be quite expensive so start with the simple cheap options first like the hot water bottle.

3.      Turn disappointment into opportunity – an injury is an excellent opportunity to work on areas that you might have been neglecting. For example, I tore a chest muscle three weeks ago, but it didn’t prevent me doing all lower body mobility work, upper body pulling exercises and core work. The tear has given me more time to work on these areas and I’ve seen a significant improvement in all of these in the past few weeks. The key here is to not to over-do the movements you’re able to do as overuse can lead to injuries in other areas. To avoid this, make sure you’re varying how you do the movements you’re using for the areas you’re working on and resist the temptation of going to complete muscle failure all the time as you want to be able to train with high frequency and you can’t do that if you’re pushing it too much.

4.      Reintroduce slowly – Here’s where the problems start because most people just can’t wait to get back to what they were doing before. What you need to do is to drastically reduce the training volume and intensity of the movements that cause you pain. For example, if you had an Achilles injury and you wanted to get back to running you could walk for 2mins, very light jog for 1min and repeat (if pain free) for 12-15mins. Over the next two weeks you chip away at the walking time and increase the running time. This same pattern goes for any strength based movement, such as, a squat, you slowly build your numbers back up as opposed to thinking “well it feels fine today so let’s push it”. I’ve seen more minor injuries become chronic because people did not simply give it time to recover. Remember there are lots of other areas of your training that need work so get working on those.

5.      The mental game – How you frame the injury in your mind is possibly the most overlooked part of getting back to full fitness. Isolation from your training group, a feeling of depression because you can’t do the thing you enjoy, a feeling of anxiety about how long it’s going to take and questions of will you get back to your best are all normal. Injuries can remove you from the social support you would normally get from training or if you train on your own the mental release you get from a good workout. Some easy ways to deal with this I recommend A) mentally rehearse seeing and feeling yourself being back to full fitness, what will people say as you return to new levels because the injury gave you time to work on weaknesses? B) Think on ink – write down your goals over the next few weeks and the roadmap you’re going to take to get back on top.

6.      Nutrition while injured – It’s easy to fall into the trap of eating poorly because you feel sorry for yourself but low quality nutrition is only going to make things worse. Highly processed, nutrient empty foods cause an inflammatory effect on the body and in high enough amounts lead to weight gain and joint soreness so keep the food on track and reduce your overall calorie intake if you’re not able to train to the same intensity and frequency. Foods that will help you feel good are lots of veggies especially leafy greens – cook them lightly and add some spices if you like, lots of good fats fish and nuts, and plenty of fruits especially apples and berries. All these offer antioxidants and polyphenols which will help with inflammation. Try avoid (which you should do anyway) highly processed foods, especially those chock full of refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils.

In summary, we often only value our fitness and health when we don’t have it so get tuned into recognising when your range of motion in certain joints has become limited to help spot problems before they happen, have a plan of action if injuries occur, write it down, start performing lots of light reps on movements that work the injured area, stay connected to the sport/activity you enjoy and eating poorly while injured is only adding fuel to the fire so keep the food on track to speed recovery and restoration.