How To Comeback From An Injury Stronger Than Ever
Recovering from an injury can be hard, but its definitely not impossible, and you won’t be out for forever. You’ll be back to playing in no time, and potentially come back even stronger
Two years ago I broke my arm by just riding my bike, sometimes injuries spring out of no where and we can’t prevent them. But just because we get injured doesn’t mean we have to stop playing. While I was out for 8 weeks, that didn’t stop me from training safely.
When you get injured and you spend a lot of time doing your sport, it will be very rough mentally. You’re going to want to just hop right back in asap, or push yourself all the time on your own. You might be mad at yourself for getting injured even though its not your fault.
It can be really depressing be ripped away from your sport because of an injury, but you have to have patience, if you jump back in too soon, you could make your injury much worse. The doctor told me that if I fell on my arm again 8 weeks would turn into 24 weeks. Thats half of a year.
So I took the doctor’s advice, I didn’t do anything stupid while I was on my own, in fact I was very cautious, but just because you are injured doesn’t mean you can’t train, it just means you have to train a bit differently.
First lets talk about what NOT to do during an injury.
- Don’t rush back too quickly, I can’t say this enough, if you further injure yourself you will lose so much more and have to wait so much longer compared to if you had just waited.
- Don’t ignore pain, if you are doing an activity and your injured area is hurting more then that is your body signaling to STOP, it needs to recover
- Don’t ignore your doctor, your doctor is going to give you advice and resources to cover as quickly as possible, if you don’t follow their directions then you will not recover back to 100%
Here is what you can and should do when you have an injury. While you won’t be able to train as intensely as you did when you had that injury, there are alternatives ways to train and even keep some of your previous athleticism.
- Listen to your doctor, as stated multiple times throughout this article, your doctor knows what is best for you and is trying to help you, so take their advice and follow it!
- Depending on your injury and if your doctor says its okay, then you could still stretch, this means that you can come back more flexible than ever! And being flexible has a range of benefits!
- Mentally train yourself through focus exercises, meditating and even playing something like could chess could help you become more alert!
- Go to physical therapy!!! I’m going to say it again, go to physical therapy!!! Find a place or person who your doctor recommends and start going, they will only help you recover faster and help you keep the same strength + mobility that you had before
- If you had a diet before your injury, or were eating healthy, don’t suddenly give up on it, but also talk to a nutritionist and rethink what you were eating before, because when you are injured you will be burning a lot less calories.
- Most important: REST!!!! When you are injured you NEED to REST!!!! Its the fastest way to heal and the most important part of the process!
Don’t forget your support group, when you have an injury and out for a while its easy to feel lonely or that you can’t do anything, but your teammates, coaches, family and friends are all there for you! Don’t forget that!
NEVER give up, don’t quit your sport because of an injury and don’t get upset if right when you go back you aren’t the same as before, you will be back to normal in no time! We all have highs and lows, its the people who power through the lows you get to the highest of highs! You got this!
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Hey there! I’m Broderick, founder of The Athlete. I started The Athlete to connect sports related topics to everyday life such as optimizing your performance or employing a mindset. If you’re interested in writing for The Athlete then leave a comment on any of my posts and I'll add you as a writer as soon as I can!
