You may be asking yourself, why have I put up a photo of my legs and what does this have to do with being injured?
Well let me give you some back story about me and being injured!
Have you ever heard of the good ol’ ACL?
The ACL stands for anterior cruciate ligament, one the key roles of this ligament is to prevent your shin (tibia) from moving forward past the thigh bone (femur) as well as providing over all stability.
Even though it’s so important for healthy knee functioning, it is actually an extremely common area to injure!
Just in the United States there is between 100 and 200,000 ACL ruptures per year!
I’m one of those statistics! I have ruptured my ACL once which was repaired using a strand of my hamstring and then I re-ruptured the graft which resulted in two knee reconstructions before I was 20 (thanks soccer).
The average recovery time after going through a decent rehab period is around 12 months.
Was this 12 month hard physically? You betcha!
Did I doubt myself over and over about restoring my knee? Tick
Was I ever able to train like I did prior to my injury? Yep! In fact, I even exceeded my pre-injury state!
What I want you to understand from this is that injuries can be debilitating, some more than others, in majority of cases we can still function at a high level after injury!
Given my time as an Exercise Physiologist I have seen a host of injuries – traumatic brain and spine injuries from car accidents, ligament and tendon ruptures, impingements, chronic pain, you name it!
Our injuries do not have to be the end. We can still regain a high level of functioning and achieve meaningful goals to us!
Am I saying it’s easy? No, I have seen injuries that occurred years prior and are still healing and trying to regain what they once had.
This is hard physically, mentally and emotionally, you will days when you feel amazing and some where you think you aren’t making any progress. This is part of the injury healing process; it is not linear it’s more akin to a rollercoaster!
So how can we keep you moving whilst injured?
- Choose appropriate exercises
- This may look like biasing certain areas of your body, if you have injured your legs, you may utilise more upper body movements!
- You can use fixed position exercises such as machines or closed chain movements that don’t require you moving the injured site too much
- Modify your range of motion!
- We can change the intensity of the exercise by changing how far you move!
- This may look like utilising a box squat instead of a full depth squat
- Using incline push ups instead of push ups
- Use different types of contractions!
- We have three – 1 shortens (concentric), 1 lengthens (eccentric) and 1 stays the same (isometric)
- With our isometrics these are generally great for injuries as they tick a lot of the above box’s – They don’t require you too move through much range of motion and they also have an analgesic or pain-relieving effect on the injury site.
- Train the Unaffected Limb
- Let’s say you injure your left arm, does that mean you have to stop training your right arm? No!
- In fact, training the uninjured limb actually still helps you gain strength through the injured side! Sounds strange, doesn’t it? This occurs through your neuromuscular system, by repeating actions we become more efficient at utilising our nerves which stimulate the muscle and this leads to a cross over so you can maintain some gains in the injured limb!
What injuries have you gone through or are you currently suffering with?
I’d love to hear your story!
Check out our new book ‘Move Right. Live Right’. Available on Amazon, Booktopia + More! A book to empower you to take control of your health, lifestyle, training + more!
Move Right. Live Right.
Check out our new book ‘Move Right. Live Right’. Available on Amazon, Booktopia + More! A book to empower you to take control of your health, lifestyle, training + more!
