The most common injury mistake

If you’ve ever had an injury you’ve either worked through it, worked around it, or eventually rested it! What happens when you “rest” an injury? You take away the aggravation, so usually over time things eventually get better, then you return to the gym or whatever the training routine was before. The problem is that when you rest and feel better you assume that the problem is gone and you resume the same training as before. As I’ve said before, “rest” is not a cure, just a way to stop or minimize aggravation to an injury. Without diagnosing the root and mechanism of the injury why would you expect anything other than the same eventual outcome when you return to training.

If you go to the gym and bang your head against the wall for half an hour you will probably start getting a headache. If you rest the headache will go away, but if you return to the gym and repeat the same exercise why would you expect anything other than a headache again?

Injuries can tell you a lot about the state of your body and it’s imbalances. And your training is either going to exacerbate imbalance or correct it. So if you are developing an injury, besides getting the appropriate treatment, you need to look into your training. The injury will tell you that you are missing something, doing too much of something or simply doing something wrong/with bad technique. The same can be true for stretching too, if you keep stretching a muscle and it keeps getting injured, then guess what? You are probably stretching the wrong muscle. There is a lot to be learned from an injury and depending on how you handle it an injury can be a blessing in disguise at it may give you the strongest that will guide you towards your biggest improvements in performance.

Over the years I have torn a few things, strained a few things, had various tendinitis’s etc, but after every major injury I would get treatment, look into the mechanism of the injury and then decide what aspect of my training needed alteration, and almost every time I have done this I have made personal records on the comeback. I have almost never had the same injury twice and I believe this has been due to recognizing that the injury should be a learning opportunity and that for it result in something positive there has to be a recognition for the need to learn and make changes.

Over the years I have torn a few things, strained a few things, had various tendinitis’s etc, but after every major injury I would get treatment, look into the mechanism of the injury and then decide what aspect of my training needed alteration, and almost every time I have done this I have made personal records on the comeback. I have almost never had the same injury twice and I believe this has been due to recognizing that the injury should be a learning opportunity and that for it result in something positive there has to be a recognition for the need to learn and make changes.

With a good therapist on your side the process becomes much easier. A good comeback is one in which you return better than before!

Hassan Z.