Perhaps nothing is more frustrating for athletes and persons who exercise on a regular basis than to suffer an injury. The thought of being sidelined for any sizable period of time is a nightmare to such persons, and we unfortunately see a lot of people undermining their own rehabilitation regimens by getting back into exercise before they’re ready.
While we admire the courage of anyone who wants to fight past an injury to get fully back on their feet, it’s important to realize that some exercises may do more harm than good. Depending on the injury, that fitness regimen you engaged in prior to the injury could be downright disastrous during a recovery. In order to avoid exacerbating an already tender area, you might consider some of the tips on hand from a new report from Men’s Fitness.
The first piece of advice focuses on how those with tendinitis in their arms can protect themselves from further harm. Because tendinitis is an overuse injury, a healthy workout will require you to move away from your elbows and shoulders, allowing those body parts to rest while you get your pulse rate up via other means. If the injury was a result of something like tennis or pitching, refrain from those activities. The same goes for if the injury can be attributed to weight lifting.
Instead, lift weights that focus on different muscle groups, and when it comes time to get the arm back in the game, start off from a lower baseline. If you put too much weight on too quickly, the injury may roar back to life. Strive to get away from any movements that only work one group of muscles. If you replace a push movement with a pull movement, for instance, you could find that you feel far better at the end of a workout than you did even before an injury sidelined you.
There’s also a certain way that you should approach pain in the lower back, something that becomes all too common when lifting technique is imperfect or when too much weight is applied to a lift. The physical therapist interviewed for the story recommends pulling in the core when conducting any kind of overhead lifting maneuver. When you do this, you force the rest of the body to take on the load that may otherwise be hoisted solely upon your lower back.
In addition to some other techniques that can be used for some specific injuries, the story relates perhaps the most important piece of advice, which is how to keep further damage of various types at bay. Give yourself an ample amount of rest to recover from strenuous sessions, and if lifting is your primary exercise, make sure that you’re interspersing some cardio work in there with that.