Exercise and Injury

Are you nervous about exercising while managing an injury?

Totally understandable!

Injuries can be scary and the last thing you want to do is hurt yourself again. In saying that, training around an injury is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Not only is rehabilitation essential for the injured site, it’s also really important that you take care of the rest of yourself!

Training the rest of your body not only keeps the rest of your fit and healthy, there are also some really awesome carry-over effects to your injured site.

So what exactly can you expect when you keep exercising while injured?

Firstly, some really amazing neural changes occur when you continue to exercise non-injured body parts.

Let’s take an injured bicep as an example. You tore a tendon in your left bicep and it is currently in a brace repairing. You aren’t allowed to move the elbow joint for four weeks.

If you continue to train your right bicep, your brain continues to send messages down both arms along neural pathways, ensuring both biceps receive messages. This is important.

It is important because when you come out of the brace, the nervous system hasn’t stopped working entirely, which means there is greater coordination and movement available AND there is less muscle wastage! You’ve managed to maintain some conditioning of the left bicep even though it’s been immobilised in a brace for 4 weeks.

How amazing is the brain?!

Some other really great positives of continuing to exercise while injured include:

• You maintain muscle mass through the rest of your body
• You improve your rate of recovery by boosting your immune system with regular exercise
• You improve your cardiovascular and heart health
• You improve blood and lymphatic flow throughout the body
• You improve your mental health and overall happiness while remaining productive in the gym or with your sporting club.

If you are injured, don’t sit still!

Chat to an experienced Exercise Physiologist today to learn exactly how you can continue to exercise while moving through your injury rehabilitation.