I wanted to dial in a bit more on the 3 reasons common injuries occur during one’s fitness journey.
On this blog I will be talking about “Lack of Recovery”.
First I want to specify what type of “Injury” I am referring to. I am talking about the most common aches and pains I have seen athletes deal with over my 15 years of coaching. These are minor aches and pains such as low back issues, shoulder pain, hip, knee, and ankle pain, and also elbow and wrist pain.
I am not talking about “catastrophic injuries such as fractures, torn ligaments, and dislocations. Those should all be addressed by a GOOD physical therapist. Key word here GOOD!!
As for the common “injuries” a lot of the time they spring up on us because we don’t spend enough time recovering.
Now recovery could mean many different things:
- Proper Nutrition: We are in complete control of what we put into our body. And from my experience, eating properly has a huge impact on the amount of pain your body is spitting out at you. If you don’t know where to start when it comes to nutrition click HERE. Eating poorly, causes a lot of inflammation, and when the body is inflamed you will start to feel pain in the areas of your body that already have some sort of issue.
- Quality Sleep: Allowing the body time to heal through 6-8 hours of good quality sleep. When we sleep, our entire system rejuvenates. Nervous System, Tissues, hormone levels that both aid in building muscle and burning fat, and cognitive function. For more info on why lack of sleep causes weight gain check out Coach Jesi’s blog on sleep HERE
- Rest Days: Giving the body enough recovery time between high intensity training days. This doesn’t mean you have to rest every other day. This means following a good fitness program that doesn’t overtrain certain muscle groups or systems. This means you don’t have to beat yourself into the ground every single workout. This means listening to your body and when it’s feeling run down and sluggish it’s probably time for a day off or at least an “active recovery day”.
- Mobility Work: Alright, everyone loves lying on top of a pvc pipe or lacrosse ball and just torturing themselves right? Of course not. Most people skip this very crucial part of fitness. We trash our bodies day in and day out. Not only inside the gym but outside as well. We work long days and put ourselves in poor positions all the time. So why don’t we take the time to show our tissues some love? Time. Most of us think we don’t have time, when only 10 min a day of good mobility work can have a huge impact on how fast you recover and actually get you some relief from these problem areas. Just set your alarm clock 10 min earlier and boom there is your Time. A great resource to learn how to “mobilize” properly is Becoming a Supple Leopard.
- Stress: Stress causes cortisol levels to rise which will bring on a lot of issues we really do not want. Some of these issues could be weight gain, loss of muscle, anxiety, joint and muscle pain, and even heart disease. The list could go on and on.
Now the good thing about all 5 of these, we are in control. It’s definitely not easy but it is possible to improve our quality of recovery. If you are struggling with aches and pains more frequent then you would like, I would take a close look at the list above.
There might be more than one out of whack. Start with the most obvious and slowly start improving it. It’s like training, small progressions will lead to big results. Results being a lot less nagging injuries.
I have gone through the “Come Back” on many occasions so if you would like guidance please feel free to reach out. We will look at some areas where we can make positive changes and create a great game plan to not only get you out of pain but also improve your fitness. Just click the link below.
