Posted on July 17, 2014 by Kate Halsall

If you love exercise and sport and gain an injury; it can be the most frustratingly depressing takes-longer-than-you-think recovery process. The vicious circle that is your paranoia surrounding aggrevating the injury combined with every part of you needing to keep excercising, can zap that motivation and will to live right out of you. Whether you hurt your back, your knee or your shoulder; it’s completely debilitating when even the most basic exercises or movements become difficult. When you start to train when recovering from injury you need to try and shift your focus. We need to concentrate on what we can do, and realise that trying to get back to our usual routine and volume is not as important as getting in the quality of work and preparing our body for its return to fitness.

It’s a phased training approach – just like your normal training! There’s nothing wrong with setting yourself smart goals to get back to your original fitness levels – in fact, we would encourage it! However, we need to walk before we can run – and as slow as the process will seem, it’s the best way to avoid re-injury. I can’t put down how many weeks you should be doing these phases for as everyone is different; but at least you’ll know how to stage your approach back to fitness rather than going all out on a good day and ending up back at square one!

Immediate Recovery Phase – or as I like to call it – The Do What You’re Told Phase:
If a health care professional has given you exercises to do – do them! We all want instant results, but it isn’t going to happen. Keep moving and mobile – as much as possible. “Rest” does not mean sit on your backside and feel sorry for yourself (trust me, I did it, and it made my back worse!).

Cross Training Phase:
Work out what exercises you can and can’t do. If you’ve hurt your knee or back, you can train upper body and do low impact cardio such as swimming or aqua walking/running. Not everyone is the same, and some exercises that may be recommended by people may not work for you. But it’s worth a go! Plus this will mean you wont completely lose your fitness and will still feel the benefit of exercising.

Functional Preparation Phase:
We’re mentally ready to start working towards those goals, we just need to make sure that the rest of us is! This phase includes stretching and muscle activation/strengthening exercises for the injured area. So if it was your back that you hurt, you need a programme which focuses on your core and postural muscles. If it was your knee that was injured, your programme will focus on gait and activating the muscles which support your knees and so on. This phase is about technique and rebuilding your confidence.

Go For It Phase:
When your body tells you you’re ready, and starting slowly, it’s time to start making good on those goals you set. This isn’t going to be instant fitness, and certainly won’t be 2 weeks after injury! But it’s time to start back doing what you love – just with a little caution at first.

I can say be patient – but I know from experience that we’re not. You just have to remind yourself that you will get back to where you were, you can do it, and you’re not completely broken or down and out. Hopefully this blog will help you to put a programme together so you can train when recovering from injury…..now pick yourself up and get to that gym!

Further Reading:
http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/how-to-return-to-training-after-a-low-back-injury
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/tipsandtricks/a/TrainThruInjury.htm
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/rehab/a/aa040103a.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/05/running-training-injury-recovering