Are you letting injuries derail your progress?
This month we asked trainer Matt from “The Results Room” in Newstead to give us some insight into how to keep up with your fitness goals even if you have an injury.
An injury, pains, niggles and other ailments can really derail our focus and commitment to regular exercise and training. It can happen to anyone from high-level athletes to office workers to stay-at-home mums. If this is you, I want you to know that it’s not the end of the world or the end of your health and fitness goals, but a mere setback to learn from and overcome. Sometimes these things can take a long time to manage and frustrations can set in, but if you ensure there is a plan in place to fix it, perseverance is the key to seeing it through and coming out millhouse!
The following are a few strategies that you can implement in your training to keep you on track:
- Train the uninjured body parts
If you injure your ankle for example, you still have all of your upper body that you can train and the other leg! Don’t be scared of creating an imbalance, as you will get a cross-education effect to the injured side that will help maintain the strength you do have and help to speed recovery.
- Do your rehab exercises!
It helps your injury if you do these every day in most cases, they help to keep the injured limb mobile and provide some stimulus for either a healing or strengthening adaptation to occur. If you train with a trainer, get them to work with your clinician to monitor and coach you through your rehab exercises.
- Prevention is better than a cure
Some injuries are clearly unavoidable; in those cases implementing the first two points will keep you on track. However, many injuries come about for a variety of reasons and can be avoided. To ensure you stay injury free find yourself a reputable coach who can give you a structured plan to fit your needs, knows and coaches you to perform exemplary form on big multi-joint exercises and has a working knowledge of exercise modifications should you need to change something to suit you better.
If you have an injury, check with your Osteopath and seek their advice on training. If you have any questions or are interested in some more information about training feel free to pop in and Matt at The Results Room or send him an email to matt@theresultsroom.com.au.