Before getting into the topic allow me to disclose that I am not a doctor, and you ought to consider going to your doctor to diagnose what the problem is. I understand there are people who do not want to see a doctor for several reasons – not all doctors are created equal.
When it comes to situations where you may be limited now due to a exercise that you did with bad form, or maybe you didn’t warm up enough, etc. Whatever the case it is, it’s important to understand what caused it, what you can do about it, and how you can work around it moving forward.
In the video I discuss the difference between a strain and tear as these two situations are vastly different. A muscle strain occurs when a muscle or tendon is overstretched; a tear is when it is both overstretched and torn.
So what do you do now that this happened?
1. Go see a sports medicine doctor, physical therapist, or chiropractor. I would advise against going to see your internal medicine physician (primary care physician aka PCP) for several reasons:
a. If it is a muscle or tendon, your PCP may advise you on something that may not be the case. Mind you doctors are trained for specific situations, and some more than others. Depending on the age of your doctor and what type of medicine they practice they may be strayed away from the thinking of a holistic approach of healing – which is when the physical therapist and chiropractor comes in
2. Work around the injury:
a. If you are in a situation that your leg is hurting then you can focus on training your upper body. If you are in a situation that your back is hurting then you can focus on isometric exercises and avoid doing too much compound exercises. Keep in mind that even if say a disc herniation happened, the disc can get reabsorbed and from that point onwards it is a matter of chaos control. You can get back to deadlifting, squatting, running, etc as long as you are stretching and doing your PRE rehab so that it does not get aggravated.
Sometimes injuries is more mental than anything, and it can stem from a feeling of fear. People may feel scared that they’ll get hurt, and when you think it is going to happen it just so happens to happen. This is why having a positive or optimistic and open mind is important. It is important for you to be aware of of any subconscious self limiting thoughts that you may have because these have a lot of control over you than you think!
Some remedies you can look into is peptide therapy – some doctors may know about it and others may not. It is a form of healing and it is still in trials for the public to use. Another remedy is physical therapy. Some people think it’s not necessary and that they can do it on their own, but the problem with doing it on your own is you may not know or understand which muscle you should be working. It’s one thing to mindlessly do a exercise and another thing to actually feel the muscle getting worked on. Physical therapy is a light form of exercise and it should definitely be incorporated to accelerate healing. Another component is food and supplements – turmeric and fish oil are magic supplements. They will help with accelerating healing for the joints and tendons! I recommend getting fish oil such as that below that is pure oil because it may be more bioavailable than the pills – I could be wrong, but that’s what I think. The bottled fish oil is also more cost efficient than getting a pack of salmon every week if you divide the cost by the days and amount of oil you’d use/day.
Lastly when you are in a situation where you are now limited and maybe have to pause your training then use this time as a opportunity to incorporate other exercises or try different activities. You can use the time to incorporate more walking, or more hiking, more bicep curls, more pull ups, more hamstring work, more machine work, etc. The possibilities are endless if you know how to be resourceful.
I am offering consultations for those who do not want to commit to month to month training and the link is below.
https://calendly.com/yelenaespinoza/consultation
Be well,
Yelena
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