Let's be honest, it's probably been a while since you last exercised. We're still in that nice little grace period where we can blame lockdown or Winter (chose your fighter). Before you hit start working out like Summer is right around the corner, it's important to remember that if you push too hard too soon, you might injure yourself.
"Re-entry into exercise is really important not just for our physical health, but our mental health as well," says APA Sports and Exercise Physiotherapist Kate Beerworth. "If you push yourself too quickly then that can lead to injury. There are two key categories of injury; acute injuries, those that have sudden impact such as if you fall over whilst running, and chronic injuries, those that have a gradual onset."
When returning to sport and exercise, there are some common injuries you need to be on the lookout for, explains Kate. However, with some thought and planning, she assures us that these can be minimised.
1. Tendons
"Your tendons are the tissue that connects muscle to bone - think your achilles, patella, or hamstring. The thing about tendons is that they don't like change, they don't like going from zero to hero in a very short space of time.
The way to combat any damage to your tendons is to gradually increase your dosage of exercise so that they become familiar with the movements again. The key is to start small and slowly increase what we call loads - your duration and intensity. This is a safe strategy as opposed to assuming you'll be able to for instance, run 10kms straight away because that's what you did the last time you exercised two months ago.
With tendons, we talk about a three day sort of turnaround recovery time, so it might be some of those higher intensity bouts of exercise you are doing once a week or once every three days rather than starting back up and going for it and trying to do it every day."
2. Bones
"Your bones are another structure that don't cope well with change. You can develop bone stress type injuries if you ramp up things too quickly. This is particularly common in vulnerable age groups such as adolescents, as well as people that have lower bone density.
For these people, they may need to look at adjusting lifestyle factors such as their diet, specifically their calcium intake and how regularly they are eating, so that they can put themselves in the best possible position for exercise."
3. Muscle injuries
"Muscular injuries most commonly surface when people make swift changes to their exercise routine, for example transitioning from steady running and general fitness to a field or court-based sport which requires more explosive or lateral type movements.
When running or jogging, muscles are conditioned to just do linear movements, but sport isn't played like that. Sport involves quickly changing speed and direction, so you become at risk of contracting a muscle injury because you are engaging your body in more dynamic tasks and demands that your muscles are not used to.
The way to help minimise these is to keep strong but also expose yourself to different movement patterns, so that when the time comes to get back into sport, the increased movements are not a shock to your muscles and you can gradually reintroduce those sport specific type movements at a lower intensity and then build yourself up to meet more matched up demands."
4. Hamstring
"This is the most common injury in a lot of sports. It is a type of muscle injury that occurs purely because of the different ways the hamstring has to work, wherein it's conditioned to adapt from jogging, running to sprinting and movements such as leaning down over a ball.
We've seen hamstring injuries be quite prevalent this year, particularly within the AFL, where despite players being surrounded by excellent medical professionals and Australian Physiotherapist Association accredited sport and exercise physios, the increased intensity and condensed nature of the sporting season has seen increased pressure on athletes' hamstrings."
Here are Kate's extra handy tips to think about for when you are ready to exercise again:
- Consider the type of exercise - You might have done a lot of bodyweight style exercises at home or gone for lots of walks and are now looking to get back into one of your favourite sports like cycling, swimming or maybe tennis. All of these have their own characteristics that involve using parts of your body that you probably haven't used a lot of, such as your upper body for swimming, which can cause some injuries in your shoulder for example. The key is to avoid the temptation to all of a sudden try and cram in these exercises but rather get back into them slowly. As a general rule, we recommend increasing your duration, intensity and volume by 10% on a weekly basis.
- Give yourself time to recover - this is paramount in the early stages, so no exercising on back to back consecutive days, your body needs adequate time to get used to physical activity again.
- Seek support and guidance - Brands like Elastoplast, through their Together We Get Up Again initiative, are committed to helping Aussies get back to doing what they love safely and, in conjunction with the Australian Physiotherapy Association, have a lot of great information and valuable resources to help you be prepared.
- Identify and manage injury early - If you are feeling regular discomfort in a specific area when exercising, get it looked at by an APA sports and exercise physiotherapist early on so that you can monitor and manage it so that it doesn't become a problem that will stop you from exercising again. Early identification and management can be really helpful because it means that the physio can advise ways to minimise the pain, re-build strength and recommend alternative exercises so you can continue to stay on track.
from POPSUGAR Health & Fitness https://ift.tt/3e1JGua
via babu31
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