Injuries suck. So bad. They happen so fast, and feel like they take SO LONG to heal. While writing this, I am in the middle of healing a pretty severe ankle sprain, one week before a high level Tai Chi test, and exactly one month before my annual fighting tournament. SO LAME. But, it isn’t the end of the world (even though I definitely thought it was for a few days there!).
If you have had an injury, or HAVE an injury, and are in the process of looking up anything possible to help you heal quickly and get back to exercising as fast as possible, then I hope this post helps you out! There is so much conflicting information surrounding healing from injuries… and all of it comes from reputable peer-reviewed sources, which makes it even more confusing! Let’s talk through a mindset shift that will hopefully help you filter out what is useful to you, and what isn’t, to allow you to heal as efficiently and enjoyably as possible.
I want to start by stating that I am not qualified to assist in healing or diagnosing any type of injury, and am mainly speaking from my own experience and from guiding my clients through injuries alongside their physical therapist. I’ve had personal experience with sprained knees, thumbs, wrists, and ankles, and have coached clients through broken ankles, wrists, knees, and herniated discs (alongside their physical therapist’s recommendations of course).
Keep in mind that I don’t know everything (nowhere near), have a TON to still learn, and will never claim to speak pure fact, although I will do my absolute best to not give any information that will negatively affect someone, and that is true as far as I know and have researched. I’m giving insight into my experience with injuries, in the hope that like-minded people will find this and be able to skip some tough steps after reading this!
What I’ll be including in this post is a possible mindset shift and different way of thinking to help you feel less trapped by your injury, and more free to take control of your own healing. The main topics I’ll be talking about will be different ways to think about your injury, options on how to adjust your routine to bring physical activity back into your day (and continue making progress in the direction you specifically want to go), validating the difficulty with being injured and how others around you may respond, and a little bit of my personal experience with this along the way!
Let’s get into it!
Looking at your Injury through a Different Lense
Injuries really do suck. And it’s so easy to be angry at whatever joint you hurt or whatever bone you broke. It’s also VERY easy to constantly be thinking back to when it happened and what you wish you did differently; thinking into the future about what you CAN’T do now because of this, and how much that also sucks. This is all part of the healing process, is completely valid, and is also completely necessary to allow yourself to move past. It happened, and it sucks, now let’s move on. Give yourself patience and grace with the fact that it happened, then give yourself permission to move on. No need to beat yourself up even more.
Now that we’ve validated this very real and understandable part of healing, let’s talk about other options you have to look at this injury. My favorite, and the one that speaks to me the loudest, is to look at this as a learning opportunity. Now you get to learn how to heal this specific injury the most efficient way possible, and you get to test your creativity when changing up your workouts. You are now forced to learn something new and put it to use immediately, so you can help others or help yourself more efficiently the next time (although hopefully there isn’t a next time!). A lot of the time we get into our heads that we want to learn something because it would be useful (like how to wrap a sprained joint, in case of an apocalypse or something; we all think about those things, right?) but since we don’t NEED it at that moment, it’s easy to forget and not stay consistent. Welp, the universe just plopped this right in front of you and is now giving you the chance to finally learn! Maybe this injury isn’t such a bad thing after all.
You also get the chance to try out exercises you haven’t thought of trying out before. This could be an opportunity to discover a new way of training that you enjoy even MORE than what you’ve been doing. This change could help you jump over a plateau as well (usually change, or changing to something that can be more consistent and sustainable is what’s needed when a plateau shows up). So here’s an opportunity to get creative, discover new ways to workout, and find out if there are other exercises out there that you like even MORE than the ones you’ve gotten accustomed to!
How to Change your Exercise Routine with an Injury
When injured, we tend to feel like we can’t do ANYTHING. Especially if the pain is pretty severe at first, and we realize how much we use that part of our body, and how useless we feel now that we don’t have the option to use it. One of the most amazing things that I’ve realized from being injured is how much you actually CAN do with an injury. The only way to figure out how much you can do is by trying! And by having an open and creative mind (and a positive, yet realistic, attitude as well!).
My first bit of advice is to not force yourself into creating a whole new program from scratch just for whatever time you’re injured (unless your current program is way too difficult for you to change to account for your injury). It is much easier and more efficient (in my personal experience!) to use the same program you have and test things out. Give yourself that week of workouts to take your time, see what you can do without pain (and I mean ZERO pain, please don’t push it!), and change up the form on whatever you need to! That way you don’t feel like you’re starting from square one, and you can take that unnecessary stress off your back. Then when you’re ready to go back in after healing, you won’t be starting over completely!
How Others May Affect your Healing Process
Something really tough about being injured (especially if you’re on a team) is the need to make others not feel “bad” for you or try and treat your injury themselves. Keep in mind this is strongly coming from my personal experience with this as a recovering people pleaser.
When you get injured everyone around you that cares about you and/or benefits off of your performance gets immediately overly empathetic, and feels the need to gaslight you into healing fast. You may hear things like “oh that’s not so bad”, “I’m sure you’ll heal fast”, “You can push through the pain”, etc. I’m sure they mean the absolute best! What makes this tough is you then feeling like you have to “lie” about how quick your healing process is. This could make the injury more stressful, and could cause you to push it too soon, causing it to stay injured longer. It can be helpful to keep in mind that you know you the best. You know your body more than anyone else, and you know your injury and its progress more than anyone else. Listen to YOU. Even if that means having to miss a game or tournament.
Another tough part of being injured around those that care for you is that they may try and diagnose your injury; maybe they had something similar in the past, or read an article, or had a relative in the industry, whatever. You still know how you need to move and what feels right and wrong better than anyone else. Even if they do have experience with a similar injury! A similar injury isn’t YOUR injury. And whatever their doctor told them doesn’t necessarily pertain to you. Again, you know you best! If you need to walk a certain way to eliminate pain and prevent yourself from injuring the area more, even if it isn’t “ideal”, do it! Unless of course YOUR doctor or physical therapist or other qualified individual tells you to do something.
I hope this article helps you adopt a new and (hopefully) more positive mindset around having an injury! And I hope you are able to find ways to change up your current programming and training to keep moving in the direction you want to go! And lastly, even though I’m sure those around you mean the best, no one knows your injury’s progress better than YOU (along with YOUR doctor or hired professional of course). Have a wonderful rest of your day, and if you’re on that healing journey.. Then good luck!! I hope it is as smooth as possible!