Mindfulness
Prevention Is Better Than a Cure!
by Jeff Richards
There are many forms of injury prevention when it comes to your physical conditioning. You might be doing some of them already but if you aren’t then this is the blog for you!
Professional athletes when they aren’t training are usually focusing on recovery. Their week is designed around getting the maximum from each session but also planning their activities and lifestyle to promote recovery in order for them to be at their best.
Here are our top 3 prevention measures; if you put as much time into maintenance and injury prevention, you could see huge results in your training and day-to-day life, says Total Rehab and Sports Injury Clinic – Corydon.
1. Therapies – Maintenance of your body is vital!
Regular sessions which help to promote blood flow, improve range of motion and break down scar tissue can help the machine that is your body to work better advise Treadwell.
Exercise can make the body tight, sore, and reduce its general function. Regular treatment helps you maintain your aches and pain, but also prevent injury and improve performance. Other forms of self-maintenance can be things like float tank sessions, cryo, and ice baths—all can have an effect on your overall recovery.
2. Load Management – this is the technique for designing all of your activity in a safe and measured way so that your performance is at its best and injury risk remains low.
All injuries can be avoided if load is managed correctly, advises ADM Ottawa Physiotherapy. For example, someone starts training for a half marathon 4 weeks before and tries to run 4 – 5 times per week will suffer an injury as they overload their tissues too quickly causing them to break down.
If you exercise, you should make sure that your sessions allow enough time for you to rest, such as 3x per week gym goers having a day off in-between each session. If you want to train more regularly, think about your training split and which body parts you train so you aren’t overusing them.
If you do more than 1 type of exercise – think about how tired you will be from one and ensure you do them in the correct order, a good example of this would be doing heavier more intense sessions at the start of the week before playing football at the end of the week. Poor load management would be doing a heavy leg session on a Friday and then running on Saturday – it’s going to be difficult.
3. Sleep – the most overlooked and one of the simplest to do. Sleep is where the body repairs and cleanses itself of waste products ready for the next day. Not many people get a good quality sleep due to hectic modern lifestyles.
You should aim for 8 hours per night as recommended by BodyWorx Vitality. There is a recommendation of 6 – 8 hours but aim for as much as you can; not all sleep will be quality deep sleep. If you aim for more, the better the chance that you will get more of the better quality sleep.
Here are some things to help get a better sleep.
- Ensure your bedroom is at cool temperature.
- Use a sleep mask and/or ear plugs.
- Stop electronic use 1 – 2 hours before bed.
- Use blue light blocking glasses if you work at a computer or use your phone a lot.
- Expose yourself to sunlight on a morning.
- Limit caffeine use after 3 pm.
- Bedtime Routine!
That completes our guide to prevention and what you should be doing to make sure you recover better and avoid injury!
About the Author
Toronto native Jeff has always had a love for writing. He first found this love in high school when he wrote articles for his fellow peers in the school newspaper. Since then, Jeff has successfully published two books, the first of which was published shortly after receiving his master’s degree in literature. With plans to write another book, Jeff’s passion for storytelling still continues more and more every day.
