Personal (Injury) History
Injury can be a tough situation to deal with, as someone who has had a lot of injuries in my athletic career I have been there like so many others. You know the drill after that, no this, no that, follow the doctor's directions and you will be good to go in a few weeks/months. I wish I could say that I was one of the good ones that followed those directions exactly as they were told to me but I never could. (I always hated coming back and having muscle atrophy.)
I have never known how to “take it easy” when it came to sports. Growing up I was always pushing my boundaries snowboarding, freerunning, playing hockey and just plain screwing around. All these sports have left me with quite a few broken bones, bruises, and bolts. And after each injury was stupid me trying to ignore the pain and act superhuman like I had regenerative powers like Wolverine from the X-Men. I would do anything I could to avoid rolling back on my progress. For example, out of the 3 times my arm was in a cast I would be trying to do pull-ups within the first 2 weeks of being in a cast, which was followed up 2 weeks later by me personally cutting my cast off cause I felt “healed”. I use to love telling myself older me will deal with the consequences… well, now I’m there!
Lessons Learned
While I’m still out there always trying to push myself I have definitely already slowed down quite a bit only at 26. Often times people don’t believe how much I hurt on a daily basis this young but once they hear me start cracking everything (like 8 times a day), and I do mean everything they get the hint. Not to mention already having sciatic nerve pain!
All of these past injuries have taught me one thing for sure and that is to follow the doctor's instructions. I often find myself spending a lot more time focusing on recovery and injury prevention much more than I use too. Every night I spend 20 minutes stretching and my Tens unit and I have become good friends. And of course, as soon as anything is straining a bit I take it easy and try to rest it as much as I can.
Cross Training
As hard as it is to rest sometimes I have found cross training in other sports to help me pass by the recovery time. If I have upper body injuries I focus more on improving my cardio and leg strength, lower body injuries and I focus more on my core and upper body. Just getting moving and working in some way really puts my mind at ease. I just can’t stand sitting around too long or I get a little stir crazy.
Take Care Of Yourself
Any athlete will tell you that injury is in no way a good time but recovery properly is extremely important. Take it from someone who has learned the hard way that ignoring injury is an extremely irresponsible thing to do. So take the time and rest up; healing properly is much more important than getting back out there only to make things worse. So good luck, take it easy, and remember to take care of yourself. Cheers!