Every time we go to work out, we put our bodies under immense stress and at risk of becoming injured.
This is just part of the process of working out: the more often we push ourselves, the more likely we are to get injured.
It’s easy to get too comfortable and start forgetting how easy it is to get injured. I can admit that this happens to me too sometimes.
It actually happened to me during one of my leg days earlier this week. I strained part of my right hamstring and calf while performing RDL’s because I didn’t warm-up properly.
Instead of dwelling on the injury I’m focusing on what I can do to heal and prevent injuries in the future.
Here’s what I’m doing so far to speed up the healing process:
1. Heat and cold therapy
Icing the region of your body that’s injured is one of the best ways to bring down swelling, pain, and irritation.
What I’m doing is applying a cold compress to the region alternating between on and off every 15 minutes for an hour or two.
When icing, it’s important to make sure you have a barrier like a cloth or towel between your skin and the cold compress so you don’t risk irritating the area any more.
Another thing I’m doing is applying heat to the region to increase blood flow and promote the healing process.
Some of my favorite ways to do this are either through a heating pad, a hot shower, or a hot bath.
I’d recommend that you take caution when using a heating pack, it’s easy to leave it on for too long and increase swelling and irritation.
Additionally, if the pack is too hot it can cause burns on the skin which certainly wouldn’t be good for the healing process either.
2. REST
Rest, rest, and more rest! That’s the only way your body is going to heal.
Even though I’m still injured, I find myself extremely tempted to go to the gym and hit legs again. But, I know my body just needs to rest.
I know that by trying to push my body back into things too soon I would only make things worse.
By doing this, I’d risk injuring myself more and taking myself out of activity for even longer.
I know it’s hard, but just wait until you can come back 100% before you start pushing yourself again.
3. Light stretching
One of the best ways to promote healing is by stretching the muscles that are injured.
I like to focus on doing stretches for whatever muscle or region is injured as well as doing stretches for the surrounding areas.
One thing you have to be sure of when stretching is not to push to the point of pain.
When you’re stretching, the slightest amount of discomfort is normal, but you shouldn’t feel any pain. Pain indicates you’re pushing them too far, which could result in even more tearing.
I recommend doing some light stretches at least twice a day, I like to do morning and night, to help your muscles heal the quickest.
I hold each stretch for about 30 seconds and repeat that 3 times.
4. Light activity
Light activity like swimming, walking, biking, or jogging are a great way to promote blood flow to the area and help re-strengthen the muscles during the recovery process.
I mainly focus on going for walks on my street, because that’s what’s easiest for me, but all the other options are just as good.
Swimming, walking, biking, and jogging are all examples of active recovery.
Active recovery is used during the healing process to keep your body moving while bringing more blood to the area. The more you can increase blood flow to the area, the quicker your body will heal.
This is also a great way of letting your body know that this muscle is still active. Therefore it needs to heal as quickly as possible.
How to prevent injuries from happening
1. Improve mobility/flexibility
I wrote a previous post on how to increase performance by improving flexibility, with a lot of good information on how to increase your flexibility.
The main thing to know is if you want to increase mobility and flexibility, you have to stretch.
Both static and dynamic stretches are a great way to stretch your muscle and increase your flexibility over time. In my post on increasing flexibility, I talk more about the difference between static and dynamic stretches.
Just know that increasing your flexibility is a slow process and requires a lot of patience, but in the end it’ll be worth it.
Just stay consistent stretching and doing mobility exercises everyday, sometimes even multiple times a day. Before you know it you’ll see so much improvement in your performance and daily routine.
2. ALWAYS begin with a dynamic warm-up
Skipping a warm-up is certainly one of my bad gym habits. After all, not warming up properly was what caused my injury.
It’s easy for me to become too eager and excited to workout that I just want to jump right in.
This causes me to skip over one of the most vital steps of working out: warming up.
I always convince myself that a few lighter sets and reps of an exercise is enough to warm me up before I jump into the heavy weights, but really it’s not.
You want your muscles to actually be warm before you start lifting heavy.
This will help make sure your muscles are flexible and blood is readily flowing to the region.
You certainly don’t want to start lifting heavy when your muscles are still stiff. This is a recipe for disaster!
So trust me, it’ll be worth the extra 5-10 minutes to put in towards a dynamic warm-up routine.
A couple things I like to include in a dynamic warm-up routine are:
Light cardio
This can be as simple as incline walking/ jogging on the treadmill – even if it’s just for a few minutes this is a great way to get your muscles warm and get them ready to lift heavy.
Dynamic stretches
Incorporating dynamic stretches into your warm up is a great way to increase blood flow, mobility, flexibility, and prepare your body for movement.
3. Focus on your form
Even if you have good form, you can still risk an injury for other reasons. For example, when I was performing my RDL’s the other day, I had great form.
However, I ended up with an injury because I didn’t warm up properly.
I talk more about the importance of form in my post on why form is so important in the gym.
The main points are that poor form takes your muscles, joints, and tendons out of alignment and their natural paths of movement.
This is a great way to become injured, especially if you’re lifting heavy with bad form.