Dealing with an injury sucks. Regardless if your injury is causing you acute pain or chronic pain, it’s just a serious pain in the ass to have to live with. As someone who has had his own fair share of injuries, I can relate to the impact that they can have on a person’s day to day life. From waking up constantly feeling sore in the morning, to having difficulty bending over to tie your shoes, to even walking for prolonged periods of time, an injury can really disrupt the way in which we live our lives.

And although, we’re all told that rest is the best cure when working through an injury, is it really the best solution?

In my experience, sometimes yes, however most times no……

How Serious Is The Injury?

Before being able to treat an injury, you first must figure out as to how serious your injury is. Obviously if your injury is life threatening, then it’s important to receive immediate medical attention and take the recommended time needed to rest and recuperate. However if your injury is painful yet still manageable, is it truly necessary to stop exercising and going to the gym completely?

For example, I had a client break his leg skiing up in Whistler last year. The rehabilitation process was long and painful for him at times, yet he never missed one training session with us at our training facility. In fact, he was back in the gym less then 2 weeks after his surgery, training upper body with me while sitting in a wheelchair. A few weeks after that, he was hobbling around on crutches as we started to add back more and more exercises into his routine. And roughly 5 months after the initial injury, we were back training legs at full blast. My client was told by his Doctor to “rest” for 8-10 weeks and to not do any exercise whatsoever. However in my opinion, this advice would have only made the rehabilitation process that much longer, and perhaps may have not allowed my client’s leg to fully ever heal properly.

My point is that although Doctors are highly educated and deservingly well respected, they are not always correct when it comes to rehabilitating an injury (especially one that is muscular, tendon, and/or joint related). And in their defence, they’re just trying to protect the average person who doesn’t exercise on a regular basis from reinjuring themselves and therefore are offering safe, yet very generic advice.

However if you’re not the average person, and you do exercise on a somewhat regular basis, then why on earth would you follow the same advice that someone who is completely inactive and fairly sedentary is being prescribed to follow?

It just doesn’t make any sense to me….

No Pain, No Gain?

I honestly hate the term – “No Pain, No Gain!”. In my opinion, this is just some egotistical, wannabe macho, phrase, used by certain Meatheads who consider themselves to be “Hardcore” because they are willing to train through their injuries. Look, if you recently herniated a disc in your lower back, then it’s probably not a wise decision to go and squat 315lbs for reps the very next day. It might however be acceptable to perform some walking or stationary lunges to help stretch out your hip flexors and provide some relief to the inflamed area. Lunges are typically not straining on the back as well, which makes this is an excellent exercise choice for someone to use who is dealing with a serious back injury.

The same can be said for dealing with a strained muscle. A few months ago, one of our clients strained his bicep tendon while doing the Tough Mudder. This made it difficult to perform certain exercises such as barbell and dumbbell curls. However rather then ignore training the bicep muscle completely, we focused on training the tricep muscles at the beginning of his arms workout, and then after 20-30 minutes, began with some light bicep exercises, once the muscle belly had been warmed up sufficiently.

Regardless as to how severe your injury might be in a particular muscle group, there is always another muscle group that you can train, or another exercise that you can do to help you work around your injury.

Being Proactive

I’ve worked with ALOT of clients over the past twenty years who have dealt with numerous different types of muscular and joint injuries. I’ve pretty much seen it all at this point in my career. Funny enough, the majority of the injuries that I’ve seen did not even occur in the gym. In fact, I think if you ask most people, they will tell you that their injuries occurred outside of the gym. When you’re in the gym training, you are focused and paying close attention to how your body is moving and the weight that you are lifting. And if you’re not paying attention, then it shouldn’t shock you if and when an injury does occur.

When it comes to how fast a person recovers from their injury, I think it’s fully dependent on how proactive they are with their own recovery. My clients, who exercise on a regular basis, get regular active release work done, and/or make appointments with an RMT or Physiotherapist when needed, are the ones that always recover the quickest from an injury. The people that bury their heads in the sand, and don’t do anything about their injury, except “rest” and hope that it goes away, are usually the ones that are left with dealing with an injury that could have been acute, but has now turned chronic due to not being proactive from the very beginning.

Reality Check

Remember, being injured is NOT a death sentence. If you’re smart with your training and have a good grasp on basic human anatomy and physiology, then you should still be able to exercise on a regular basis. You just need to be careful and mindful as to what you are doing in the gym. And if you are unsure as to what may or may not be safe for you to do, or want to learn how to rehabilitate your injury fully and in the least amount of time possible, then I strongly recommend enlisting in the services of a trained and licensed fitness professional.

“An injury is not just a process of recovery it’s a process of discovery.”
Conor McGregor

Yours in Good Health,

Nick Cosgrove
Forever Fit Performance