Exercises you can do to keep fit when injured
It is better to take a day off and recover rather than push yourself too much and cause more extensive injury.
What you need to know:
- While it is important to give your body the chance to properly heal, with a little planning, common sense, and a health practitioner’s go ahead, it is possible to keep up with an exercise routine while recovering.
If you have a sports injury, you may need to take time off to recover. However, if you do not want to stop exercising, there are ways to maintain physical fitness while recovering from the injury.
But resuming a fitness routine after an injury can be complicated. Depending on the severity of the injury, it is essential to pay attention to your body and take it slow.
Here are workouts that can be used to maintain physical fitness during an injury.
Pool running
This is a low-impact aerobic exercise that lets you practice jogging without straining your injured body parts. In addition, the buoyancy of water reduces the impact of your feet hitting the ground by up to 90 percent.
Water supports your weight and protects your joints from the jarring of running on hard surfaces. Because of this, it is considered an excellent choice for people suffering from joint or bone injuries. It is also good for older athletes who are not ready to stop working out.
You can use a buoyancy belt or inflatable armbands, especially if you plan to go deep into the pool. You can also increase your speed at regular intervals, including sets, laps, and time.
Staircase walking
Depending on the injury, a great way to build and restore your body from injury and into a training routine is stair walking. The motion strengthens the lower body, tones the butt, calves, thighs, and builds excellent abs. Other benefits include,
● Building bone strength
● Safe for the knees
● It is a relatively intense workout that quickly increases heart rate hence reasonable cardiovascular fitness
● Stairs are almost available to everyone
Listen to your body
Your body is unique. It communicates with you through aches, pains, stiffness, and discomfort. Learn to read the signs it sends you so that you can gauge when to push harder and when to take it easy.
When recovering from an injury, you may sometimes feel a slight twinge in your muscles when working out. If anything feels wrong or painful, stop. It is better to take a day off and recover rather than push yourself too much and cause more extensive injury.
Lift lightweights
If you are a regular weightlifter, make sure your physical therapist certifies you as safe to lift heavy weights. Do not jump-pack weight too soon.
By carrying out frequent low-intensity workouts and higher reps, you can stimulate the hurt area and accelerate the recovery by getting the muscles moving, mainly if you do it early after the injury.
Start small until you build up to your usual routine. Lifting heavy weights too soon can make your injury severe.
Nutrition
Nutrition is underrated yet very crucial when it comes to maintaining workouts during injury recovery. The healing time varies from one person to another. However, observing proper nutrition can speed up the process.
Essential nutrients that aid recovery include;
● Zinc responsible for tissue repair
● Vitamin B complex helps to reduce the stress associated with injury
● Calcium is responsible for repairing connective tissue
● Vitamin C helps in tissue repair and growth
● Multivitamins help to prevent significant vitamin and minerals deficiencies
Warm-up preps
If you swiftly flex or place strain on a cold muscle, you raise the possibility of injury to that muscle. But if you slowly raise the temperature of the muscle, you help relax and lengthen the muscle and place it in an injury-resistant state. Therefore, be sure to stretch and warm up before you train.
Stretching builds up muscle, increases flexibility, and promotes circulation. A quick 10-minute warm-up will get the whole body active.
Walking
Walking is the most normal movement of the body. If you are unable to exercise in your usual way, walking keeps your body moving while recuperating from your injury.
Walking has circulatory benefits that get rid of blues and tiredness which derail you from playing sports, lifting weights, and general workouts.
Injury vs soreness
While it is important to listen to your body, it is possible that you may think you have an injury when you are really just sore, which may affect what is safe to do in terms of exercise.
Some pain after exercise is to be expected, especially when you are first getting started. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) comes on a day or two after a workout. When DOMS sets in, you might be worried you have an injury, but this soreness is usually your body’s response to a new kind of exercise, an especially hard workout, or working out when you are not warmed up enough.
DOMS can usually be treated with anti-inflammatory medication, rest, and something to soothe your muscles, such as a hot bath. Exercise usually needs not be limited for safety reasons if you want to keep active, although it may be uncomfortable and rest may be just what you need to get the most out of your next workout.
