Dealing with an injury
When you get injured, the first thought is to try and get it fixed and resolved as fast as possible.
However, the recovery process can vary in time depending on your injury. Whilst this might be frustrating for you, there are steps you can take to prepare yourself for activity and reduce the likelihood of making your injury worse.
In order to do this it’s important to factor in two key pieces of information…
Where are you today? And where do you need to be to return to our previous activities?
Where are you now?
Before we can start making progress, we need an idea of what we’re capable of today. Thinking about activities that we ‘could’ do instead of those we can’t helps us to find our starting point. This may mean starting slow and using simple activities like walking to get ourselves moving.
This gives us an idea of the ‘baseline’, and can work as a reference point. When we know where we’re starting from, we can start to put stepping stones in place. We want to begin to bridge the gap between our baseline and our end goal.
As with any injury, we have to look after the whole body if we want an individual area to improve. The importance of getting enough sleep, managing stress where possible and eating a balanced, nutritious diet shouldn’t be underestimated.
Where you need to be?
Once we know where to start with our recovery, we should think about what we NEED to be able to do before returning. This lets us bridge the space in between appropriately. If we can get this right, we better prepare our body to deal with the demands of our activities.
For example, if we want to do a dynamic activity like running, it can help to prepare with similar but less demanding dynamic movements like jumping and hopping. If we can do these movements, we can be more confident that we’re ready to progress.
Rehabilitation programme timeline
Once you have identified where you are now and the end goal you want to achieve, we can start plotting a rehab timeline like the one above.
Injury rehabilitation is all about filling in the space in between, making sure that when we reach our goal, we don’t have to move back down the ladder.
We Can Help
When you are ready to plan your next event, we’ll be here to support you with any training or injury-management advice that you might need!
Get in touch here and speak to a member of the Summit team!
We support a lot of athletes in the lead-up to events and we’re always here to help!
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn to keep up to date.
What’s next?
Once you have achieved your end goal and are fully healed then you can continue your exercise or training to your full capacity.
If you’re looking for a physio you can trust with your rehabilitation journey then try Summit Physiotherapy
We’ll be here to support you with any training or injury-management advice that you might need!
Get in touch here and speak to a member of the Summit team!
We support a lot of athletes in the lead-up to events and we’re always here to help!
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn to keep up to date.
