Sometimes life can knock you down – it’s almost inevitable. The real test of character is whether you can pick yourself up again and keep going.
Taking a break from exercise because you are coping with injuries can be frustrating. You want to hit the gym, but you physically can’t because someone or something has put you out of action.
The good news, though, if that there are plenty of things that you can do to get you back to fighting fit fast.
Check out these top tips for coping with injuries.
1. Start Eating An Anti-inflammatory Diet
When you are coping with injuries, your body will naturally produce inflammatory factors. That’s to be expected. These agents signal to your body that it needs to repair and heal.
With that said, inflammation can lead to problems. Excessive inflammation, for instance, can lead to a buildup of pressure that can damage the very tissues that the body is trying to repair. If you notice that you have sustained swelling around the site of your injury, try going on an anti-inflammatory diet. Eat plenty of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, along with breakfast lunch and dinner.
2. Don’t Obsess Over Your Lack Of Progress
When you’re coping with injuries, you can worry that you’re losing condition and that you’ll have to work doubly hard to get back to where you were. Fortunately, that’s rarely the case. The body has a knack of remembering past conditioning, meaning that you’ll soon get back to form, once you can resume training.
Interestingly, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that taking long breaks from exercise might be useful for busting through new plateaus. When you rest, you make it easier to shock your body when you finally go back to training, forcing adaptation.
3. Set New Goals
When coping with injuries, you have time to think about your future and where you want to be in five years. Do you want to still be sat on the couch, moaning about your condition, or do you want to be out there winning?
Here, we’re not just talking about winning in a sporting sense, either. We’re talking financially too. If you’re injured because of something somebody else did, don’t sit on your laurels. Choose a professional solicitor, not just any personal injury attorney, and make sure that you fight for your future. Thus, another goal could be to recover financially, too, as well as physically.
4. Use Your Workout Time To Learn How To Train Better
Training is as much about working hard as it is working smart. Many athletic people, however, continue to train in the same way, month after month, year after year, because that’s what they know. But that might not be optimal.
Being injured in an opportunity for you to spend time you would otherwise be training to learn how to reach your goals better. Start with low-impact exercise and work your way up. Often, you’ll find new science that catalogs the changes that you should make to your regime if you want to progress faster. Coping with injuries doesn’t have to be down time if you use it as an opportunity to grow in other places of your life!
