Ten things NOT to do after a soft-tissue injury
Pop a few ibuprofen and push through it.
Combining painkillers with training carries risks, because they artificially ‘mute’ the body, meaning there is higher risk of inadvertent further injury. Symptoms are messengers which, though unpleasant, offer useful feedback if you take a moment to listen and think. The most important rule of injury is: do not make it worse. Lose the ‘push-through’ mentality.
Stop moving and training completely.
Training around the injury can assist with blood-flow and metabolism to the injured area. You can also gently explore around the boundaries of discomfort to learn what is tolerable and what isn’t. Exercise can regulate neurochemistry which allows for deeper relaxation and recovery post-training. Choose movements that allow you work hard without guarding your injury.
Mistake the diagnosis for the prognosis.
A diagnosis is the identification of the nature of an injury by examination of the symptoms. E.g. “you have a torn rotator cuff which appears to be limiting internal rotation of the shoulder”. A prognosis is an estimation of how well you’ll recover, based on age, fitness, lifestyle and quality of rehabilitation. The prognosis is a best guess. Your individual situation may vary.
Expect your recovery to be totally linear.
The nature of the human body (and all natural systems) is to change in cycles. You may have a relatively linear recovery or you may go through days of slow or little progress then suddenly feel much better. There are so many human variables in a recovery process (what you eat, how you sleep, your pain sensitivity and your movement choices). Just keep doing what you can.
Assume the pain / injury has one cause (unless it’s a major traumatic injury).
Though certainty can be comforting, it’s rarely possible to pinpoint a single cause of injury. Though the symptoms may have suddenly appeared or worsened, it’s likely that the process began much earlier and was multi-factorial. Acknowledging the multiple human factors in injury allows a holistic and diversified approach to healing and greater long-term recovery prospects.
Take anyone’s advice as absolute gospel.
It’s your responsibility to know your body better than anyone else. It is not a car or a house - it’s home to your consciousness. Health professionals are only human and their opinion is limited to their tools, education and experience available. As trustworthy as this may be, it is never more than one perspective and should be treated with both respect and healthy skepticism.
Trust that scans will tell you the whole story.
Since pain and injury are multifactorial, scans only provide information to be interpreted as part of a bigger picture. Scans sometimes show damage to the body despite the absence of pain, and inversely, some people are in severe pain despite their scans coming up clear. Furthermore, a patient may develop an expectation of pain upon seeing damage on their scans, leading to heightened sensitivity to pain in this area of their body (nocebo effect).
Eat inflammatory, processed junk foods.
Stress causes inflammation, and since inflammation is a factor in soft-tissue injuries, eating foods which are poorly digested can have a negative effect on healing. Everybody has different food sensitivities (some more or less than others) but it’s usually a safe bet to eat clean, whole foods rather than refined, artificial foods with a 500 word ingredients list and a ton of numbers!
Over-work, over-train and avoid R & R.
Sometimes the stress of pain and injury leads to a sense of overwhelm, leading to avoidant behaviours which ‘take the mind off it’. Ironically, the pain or injury could often have been mitigated with a little more mindfulness and quality down-time. While it’s great to have projects to focus on, it’s also important to create space for nothing but healing and quiet enjoyment.
Move the same way, ignoring pain triggers.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. One of the best ways to feel great while rehabilitating an injury is to find movement patterns which are pain free. Some movement adjustments may be temporary (to avoid acute pain triggers), and others may involve more re-patterning (to avoid future recurrence of injury).