If something is hurting, how do I tell if it’s normal muscle soreness or an injury, and can I train around an injury, or is rest the best idea? Tom, N.Y.

BluntCoachFitness, HealthLeave a Comment

Hi Tom.

You’ll know if it’s more than soreness, because it just won’t tolerate any movement, massage, poking and prodding, and will spoil your sleep.

Yes, you can, and indeed you should, train around your injuries.

Let’s say you had a dodgy left leg, but you could still sit down on a hand spin bike, and do 5 sets of interval sprints forward, and 5 back.

The whole thing would take you no more than 15 minutes, you’d get an amazing arm, shoulder, lat, and core workout, and the side effect would be tons more blood pumping around your entire body, including your dodgy leg.

Whatever raw materials your body will be using to repair your injury, will be carried by the blood, but before the rebuilding can take place, the damage from the site needs to be removed, again via the bloodstream.

So, anything that pumps and delivers more blood and all the goodies it brings, including fresh oxygen, will be a good thing to speed up recovery.

Rather than adopting a mindset of feeling sorry for yourself, and laying on a couch till your healed, you’ll have adopted the true winner’s mindset, that looks for reasons ‘To Do’ things rather than reasons ‘Not to Do’.

Whilst I can’t prove this, I believe this also sends out the message that you want this injury healed super quick, and the body obliges.

You will heal quicker, feel cheerier, and be less disappointed at the injury if you train.

Since you didn’t supply your age, I was going to add the caveat that if you’re over a certain age, you may want to get more rest, since any training, especially the type I’m advocating above, will be stressful to the body, as well as therapeutic, and helping you maintain your fitness.

But then I thought, hold on, what age would that be?

Where do you draw a line in the sand, and say your energies should be purely aimed at rest and recovery, then rehab of the injury, then a gradual return to regular form?

I’d still train around an injury at 58, and I know my coach would at 73, so without knowing your background and general mindset strength, I can’t put a number on it.

These days you find ‘fragile wallflowers’ as young as 30, and when I look at the injuries they’re crying about, I think ‘are you fucking kidding me?’.

Find a good physio who’s also an athlete, since they’ll know you’ll want to get back in the game asap, and they should be able to get a good measure of your injury, mindset, and what it is you want to get back to doing, then advise you appropriately.

That’s probably the most ‘responsible’ answer I can give, but my Blunt Coach instincts just want to scream out that; ‘unless your over 70, and have a limb hanging off, don’t be a faggot’.

Hope that helps,

Blunt Coach Andy

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