Rehab

Got a few athletes dealing with injuries at the moment. Never very fun. Some of the injuries are longer term niggles that have flared up, and some of them are new issues, but no matter the reason behind them we tend to deal with them all the same.

When an athlete comes to me saying they are injured, my first question is always the same, have you made an appointment yet. I am not a medical professional and while I have been injured A LOT, that does not qualify me to give medical advice, so I always make sure my athletes get the opinion of an expert. Once we get that opinion we follow it, simple as that.

If that advice is to stop exercise then that is what we do, if it is to reduce load, then we do that too. Usually when it comes to reducing load we might vary the surfaces we are running on, we might switch to a run/walk routine or we may change to a non-impact exercise such as swimming, cycling or an elliptical trainer (which is a good analogy for running without the impact). Pretty much we are guided by the physio advice, pain levels and the nature of the injury.

Once again though, it all comes back to that guidance from the medical expert.

The other thing I really try to emphasis with my athletes is making sure they doing their rehab correctly. I work with a lot of physios and one of their constant frustrations is that people come to see them expecting a silver bullet quick fix. Often their injuries are due to overuse or strength imbalances, issues that take time to resolve, however, people expect them to be fixed after one visit, a massage, some ultrasound and some needles. Really the resolution is more likely to be rest and some strengthening exercises, but people often don't do these bits. The athletes then wonder why the issue take so long to resolve. I try and get my athletes to understand that the exercises the physios give are really important to resolving the current injury and preventing it from reoccurring. In fact with appropriate rehab athletes can actually return from in injury stronger and more injury resistant than before.

Yep, being injured is certainly frustrating, and probably one of the things that athletes hate the most. However, if approached sensibly and if the rehab is taken seriously, it can cause a lot less heartache than it otherwise would.