Injury Recovery Isn’t “Just Rest”: How to Heal and Get Back to Performance

5 minute Read

“It hurts when I do (insert painful movement)”

Dr: “Don’t do that.” “You should rest it”

This isn’t actually very helpful advice. (Unless you have a broken bone….then you immobilize and rest until the fracture has healed)

Pain is your body’s way of asking for change. It is sending you signals that it doesn’t like what is happening so please stop doing that movement….but it isn’t asking you to stop moving completely! 

Should you Ice?

Well this is a bit outdated. Back in 1978 Dr Gabe Mirkin coined the RICE protocol for injuries Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. He has since rescinded this as his recommendation for injury protocol. Because there is very little evidence to support that this actually helps with injuries. 

It has been shown that icing prolongs recovery time as do NSAIDs. When an injury occurs we rely on our immune/inflammatory systems to help clean up the damaged tissue, and move it out of the area to allow for healing. By icing it constricts blood vessels slowing the removal of the damaged tissue and allowing the helpful cells to the area. NSAIDs shut down the inflammatory process all together!

What SHOULD you do when recovering from an injury/pain

First is to figure out what the body is protecting. There is a Hierarchy of Protection (Read more about the Hierarchy of Protection in this blog post)

Many times there is an internal organ or structure that the body is protecting and sending pain signals to address this. For example if your liver isn’t moving as well as it should your body is going to protect the liver so you may be slightly tilted to the right and possibly slightly rotated as well to protect it. This can cause right shoulder pain due to the “unnatural” positioning. This isn’t poor posture…this is protection. 

Or you may now have low back pain because of this protected position. So let’s continue with this.. If you are slightly tilted and rotated you this will cause the muscles in your back on one side to be stretched and contracted on the other side. This can then pull on the muscles in your hips and legs and now can cause knee pain because this is making your IT Band tight and causing more friction on the outside of your knee where it moves over the bone. So now you have pain on the outside of your knee as well!

Hopefully you are beginning to see:

1. Everything is connected 

2. That where you have pain isn’t always an indicator of injury at that site. 

3. Say you rest your knee and as soon as you try to go back to your activities again….the pain comes right back! And that totally makes sense because you still haven’t addressed the liver!

So first you need to find a practitioner who knows how to find and address these protection patterns (achem….I do!)

Then what? 

Well once this underlying pattern is addressed now you can start working on strengthening the areas that have been affected by this pain pattern. Usually pain causes tightness and guarding which will also cause strength loss. So now you need to start working on gaining back full range of motion and strength. Many times by addressing this root cause at the neural or visceral level will result in better range of motion almost immediately….sometimes not. But in either case strengthening and maintaining mobility is now the focus. This is where movement therapy comes in. Working with someone who understands these connections and how to strengthen not just the area that was painful, but the supporting areas as well!

Many people believe that once the pain has decreased that they can go right back into their activities full go. This isn’t always the best, it may send the body back into protection because it isn’t ready….the best protection your body has is it’s strength so this step can NOT be skipped! As well as adding back specific movements, whether that be going up and down stairs regularly now instead of one at a time or cutting and change of direction drills for athletes. These need to be practiced and patterns strengthened!

Again this is something you should be working with a movement professional to help guide you through this process!

If you would like help finding YOUR root cause and working through your pain click the link below and schedule your FREE discovery call and we will chat about how I can help you and if we are a good fit!