How to Manage Injuries
Injuries are the worst. If you’re lucky, it’s not serious, and after a few weeks of rest they’ll go away. However unfortunately, sometimes they don’t, often because we don’t understand how to react properly after they occur. I’ve made the mistake too many times of not letting my body rest and heal. I’d take a few days off, but then I would get straight back to training once the pain was at a bearable level. This is foolish, and thankfully I no longer have this mentality, but it has only come as a consequence of now having a long-term injury.
There is, of course, an element of pain that is to be expected when training. You’re actively trying to push your body to its limits and extend them so that you can go further or push harder next time. I remember when I was training for my first marathon, my calves would be so stiff after running only 5 km. My dad, who had been there himself, would tell me that this was normal and it was just my body getting used to the new demands I was starting to put on it. This was true, and as the training progressed, my body did adapt. Recognizing the difference between this and an injury, though, is important. It’s also important not to let your ego get in the way of seeing this.
Quite often we have that never-quit attitude when pushing for something we really want. At what cost does the short-term satisfaction of powering through, and completing your goal, come? This is something you need to consider, because if it’s the potential for long-lasting pain, then it’s not worth it. Rest and recover to fight another day, or run the race next year. Would you rather compete in one race and be injured forever after, or miss that one race and compete in 100 others because you gave your body the time it needed to recover?
Just this morning, I had to edit this post for this exact reason. This time last week, I strained my calf while running. It was at a point where I could’ve cut the run short and walked home, but I didn’t. I limped my way through the rest of the run and gained nothing from it except an unwanted week off of training. I took that week and then went for a run this morning. Within the first couple of minutes, I felt like my calf still wasn’t one hundred percent, but it didn’t feel as bad as the previous run, so I figured it was probably okay. Halfway in, the previous strain was back. This time, I decided to stop and walk my sorry self back home. I knew that I was going to have to take at least another full week off running, if not longer. What should’ve been a one to two week recovery period is now probably going to take me a month, all because my ego didn’t want to cut that first run short.
Another time, when training for my first IRONMAN in 2020, I was doing weighted squats and went too deep with poor technique and bulged one of my discs. I instantly knew this was an injury and not a fatigue issue. I had six weeks until race day so I stopped doing weights completely and only did light swimming, running and spin bike sessions. In that time, the injury and pain receded enough that I felt OK to still compete. I didn’t seek any advice at the time as I thought I’d been able to manage it myself. In the years since, I’ve felt the exact same pain and injury return on various occasions. Each time I took a week of rest, it would ease, and I could get back to training. Again, I sought no professional guidance on what might be going on. Fast forward to four years and I'd begun training Muay Thai. From day one, the pain I'd felt on and off reappeared. This time, however, it did not relent. No matter how much rest I took, or what stretching routine I followed. I continued with the training and hoped that it was just my body needing time to adapt to a new sport. It never adapted and, in fact, only got worse. It got worse to the point where I would wake up in my sleep from the pain in my lower back and hips. It took me a full year and three months of this idiocy to figure out I needed to see someone about this. Three months on from this, and following x-rays which revealed the previous bulged disc, I've had numerous sessions with physical therapists which have slowly helped ease the pain. However, the pain is still there, and I’ve no idea if I’ve done long-lasting damage.
My advice: anytime you tweak something or feel any pain in training that isn’t just muscle fatigue, stop immediately. Do not continue to train. Even if you’re training weights and figure that you can change up the muscle group and finish your workout, it’s not worth it. Your body is made up of many parts that all fundamentally work together. If you injure one area, then the other parts will also be affected as they try to compensate.
If you have an injury that you think is serious, book an appointment with a physio or go see your doctor. The financial cost at times has made me hesitant, but now I’d rather get a professional opinion and be told what to do and what not to do to ensure I recover properly.
I’ve also found that doing some research online myself was helpful. While I normally don’t recommend googling the symptoms of an illness, as it’ll inevitably tell you that you have cancer, there can be a lot of good content online related to rehabbing an injury. Consider that you’re in a fortunate position, if that can be applied when you have an injury, of knowing exactly where the pain is and what causes it. I found it useful to try different exercises I saw recommended to see if any of them aided in my recovery. This being said, I would not recommend doing someone's weird and wacky YouTube rehab program until seeking professional advice first and understanding exactly what the problem is.
Ultimately, I believe the key to all injury prevention and recovery is education. All my major injuries have come as a consequence of poor or improper technique and putting my body in a compromising position that has led to an injury. As mentioned previously, my bulging disc was a consequence of poor squatting technique. The fact that I then went on to continue training and complete an IRONMAN six weeks later is in retrospect madness, but here we are. Could anyone have convinced me to stop at the time and allow my body the time to recover properly? Unfortunately not, but at a minimum, I should’ve gone to get a medical opinion at the time. Perhaps the reason I didn’t was because I knew it was serious enough that they’d most likely tell me to stop, but here I am now, still suffering from the consequences of that decision.
Dr. Kelly Starrett’s book Becoming a Supple Leopard, which you can find a link to on my Resources page, is a fantastic book on weight training exercises and how to perform them correctly. It also has great stretching drills for every area of the body. As someone who incorporates strength and flexibility as part of their training, I really enjoyed this book and found it to be a great resource in my own training.
In conclusion, injuries are brutal, and the longer they last, the more debilitating they can be for both your physical and mental health. Whenever they happen, make sure you make it your priority to find out the issue and what needs to be done to fix it. Your body is the only one you get, so take care of it.