4 Powerful Methods to Stay Fit While Injured
Sitting on the couch isn’t one of them
Don’t stop training because you have an injury. Instead, dial it up.
100 meters sprint. The gun goes off. I fly out of the block Ben Johnson-like (minus the steroid use.) I make my way through the next 50 meters with Usain Bolt-like ease.
Leaving them all in my wake. Leaving the others to fight for the silver medal.
If it wasn’t the final, I would have turned off the afterburners. But I arrogantly thought, why go for a record, pump it hard to the finish line. Go hard.
Without warning, what felt like a shotgun blow to my inner thigh. My body responded in kind and I immediately pulled up like a lame horse. I had no idea what had taken place, but I was in excruciating pain. I was in shock. The pain was so extreme that I was crying.
I looked up, and the race was run and won, but not by me. An official escorted me off the track.
A physiotherapist later diagnosed this as a grade 3 groin muscle strain.
Just because you are injured it doesn’t mean you cannot still train and stay in shape. I encourage you to keep training. But not in the way you normally would. Here’s how.
If you are training hard you will always have a niggle
I don’t know about you, but I have always seemed to have at least some little niggly injury. You always have some type of injury when you play sports at a semi or professional level. If you were to only train when there was no pain, you would never play or compete.
And what I know now is, from my late 30s to late 40s, I always have some little niggly injury.
Because I love staying active and don’t want to become a fat bastard, steal these tricks to stay in shape.
#1. Find another path
Do cross-training when injured.
Don’t confuse this with a cross-trainer.
Cross-training is doing physical activities that are not aligned with your sport.
If you are a sprinter and are experiencing back pain. Instead of doing repeated sprints at the athletic track, hit the swimming pool.
Swimming will take the load off your back.
In cross-training, you maintain your physical conditioning. But without engaging those muscles or joints that are injured.
lesson: continue to exercise but in another sport or activity that doesn’t aggravate the injury.
#2. Isolation the path to freedom
I have been doing yoga for 25 years.
I don’t go to classes yoga. I have become a yoga snob. I have no interest in doing one of these yoga flow classes.
I have done yoga with Mr. Iyengar in Pune, at the Iyengar Yoga Institute. In Chennai, in the house of Krishnam Acharya, the granddaddy of modern yoga.
Doing a class with a yoga teacher who has just completed their 200 hour yoga teacher training in Ubud, Bali, doesn’t interest me. Plus, I think it’s dangerous as these newbies have no idea how to teach a class with a person with injuries.
For several months now, I have had an issue with a disk in my lower back that has created referred pain in my hips.
When doing yoga, the pain in my hips only hurts when I do forward behinds with my legs apart. When my legs were together there was no pain.
Pro tip — referred pain:
What I have learned over the years is that pain in one spot is normally not the origin of the pain.
Continue to intelligently train by avoiding those functional movements that generate pain.
Lesson: continue to train in your area but in only areas, you are pain-free.
#3. Be your own expert
The big lesson I have learned when healing injuries is don’t give up your power to “experts.”
My grandfather told Mom, when he was in his 90s, don’t take him to the doctor. He uses to limp around because of the various veins in his calves.
“I only understood later why Pa told me not to get him into the health system” my mom communicated to me in a guilty tone.
Mom took him to a local doctor. The doctor referred him to a specialist. The specialist referred him to another specialist. Who put him under the knife.
Along with then loading him up with multiple medications. He was given one pill that’s only purpose was the nullify the back effects of another pill he was prescribed.
He was never the same after that operation.
The reason why he didn’t want to go to the hospital was that he saw my grandma once they have you in the system they won’t let you out.
Freedom in your healing takes place within the mind of:
The only person responsible for your health is you.
If you give over your power to doctors and other people who attended university, you are done.
Instead.
- Experiment with different exercises.
- Try different ways of eating.
- Read physiology books.
I am not advocating to become a backyard witch doctor.
Put in the effort to educate yourself on how your body works. As your body will work differently from another person’s body.
Resist the urge to self-medicate on painkillers and anti-inflators. I know it’s an easy option. But it will lead to other problems later.
Lesson: have the attitude that you are going to heal yourself.
#4. Have your own specialist team
All professional sporting organizations have a group of sports medicine experts. Physiotherapists, sports medicine scientists, fitness gurus, dietitians, and the list goes on.
Create your own special team.
I have a 70-year-old redhead chiropractor.
I did a yoga lead class. This is where the teacher is at the head of the class, and doesn’t give instructions. You just follow what they are doing in silence. I had only started doing yoga the week before.
I went up into the headstand for the first time. A couple of decades later, I still have to manage the neck pain that came up the next day. Admittedly, the issue also has to do with an obsessive few years in the gym lifting heavy weights.
The chronic neck pain will never be healed so I need to manage it.
The ranga chiropractor is also a qualified acupuncturist and self-taught homeopathist. When I wake up with neck pain. I go and see him. A crack or two later and I am back to my best.
I know a self-taught maverick “foodologist.”
When I completed a scan at the hospital because I was urinating blood and in extreme pain, they saw a kidney stone. When I called Brian, he said:
“Drink 2L of Coca-Cola in less than 10 minutes!”
I thought to myself, are you crazy? He told me the chemicals in the Coke will dissolve the kidney stone.
I somehow did it. Within 20 minutes, the pain disappeared completely.
I have another guy that doesn’t rolfing and myofascial release. And another who does kinesiology and is also a chiropractor.
It took a number of years to assemble my all-star team of physical therapists. Depending on what the injury is, I know who is best to heal it. Quickly and with the least drain on my bank account.
Lesson: build your own team.
The principal theme of training, while injured, is to continue to train but ensure there is no pain.
To continue to keep fit while injured:
- Cross training — do another sport or exercise routine that will use different muscle groups for those that are injured.
- Continue in the same training lane — do those exercises that don’t stimulate any pain.
- Responsibility — know you are the one that is responsible for your healing.
- Super fitness team — hurt far and wide to find your own team of physical therapists.
I am not advocating an anti-establishment movement against the healthcare system. But I do encourage self-responsibility as a means to healing.
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