What to do when you get Injured (Part Two)

In our last blog HERE, we discussed your immediate reactions to a more serious injury.

Now, let's say we are a week removed from the initial injury. You have seen the appropriate medical professional (a Sports Orthopedic preferably) and know your injury.

You have been using the Sauna to slow down atrophy and now feel the competitive juices to train again.

Let's say your Lateral Colateral Ligament (LCL) in a knee was torn. While intense exercise is not recommended for that leg, the rest of your body can train normally.

I'd recommend attacking Upper Body exercises with normal intensity, but selecting movements that don't require much Lower Body stabilization. Machines are a great option here while we regain confidence to balance.

Exercising the lower body in this instance becomes more complex obviously. While 1 leg is still clear for heavy movements, the other isn't.

In an instance like this, I would typically recommend the injured leg to start with isometric exercises.

An isometric exercise is where the length of the muscle doesn't change during the stimulus.

For example, a wall sit is an isometric exercise. So is a plank. You can even simply contract your muscle in any given position and it will be an isometric exercise.

A simple way for you to start at home would be to find a few angles of flexion in your knee that are painless and squeeze your muscle as hard as possible while staying clear of pain.

External resistance is not recommended in this very early stage of recovery!

For a LCL knee injury, you could sit in a chair with the injured leg straight out (or an angle that is painless) and squeeze your quadriceps for 30 seconds, then putting your knee at a 90° angle, dig your heel into the ground and contract your hamstring for 30 seconds.

This kind of push/pull set stimulates a major proportion of the leg, while being safe during injury.  The options are endless for the different injuries you may incur.

You may feel that icing your injury afterwards will be beneficial to recovery, it's actually the opposite! The doctor that published the study to recommend icing for injuries has since retracted it.

Your best temperature option for recovery is actually heat, because this expands your blood vessels and allows more nutrients to flow in and waste products or damaged cells to be removed. 

This is another reason why Contrast Therapy from Part 1 is a great tool. Moving from hot to cold and back works like a mechanical pump on your body! It opens, constricts, and then opens again to help pump blood through your injury site.