Let’s get one thing real fucking straight here. You are not invincible. It may feel otherwise at times, especially after dishing out an exercise you never thought yourself incapable of completing, but trust me when I say, the human body is a fragile and weak sack of liquid filled flesh. You are weaksauce.
That being said, a lot of us don’t really know what do in terms of tackling an injury brought about by exercise. It can be a twisted ankle, a stubbed toe, a fractured wrist, a torn muscle or lower back pain. It can be anything, and therein lies the biggest risk.
The majority of injuries at the gym result from performing an exercise in poor form or loading too much weight too soon. But dealing with an injury is more about taming your ego above all else. Many of us will feel that the injury is not severe enough and that we can “man up” and “push through the pain” and that it’ll be better in a few days. Some of us shrug off the injury altogether and refuse to admit we’re even affected. And let me tell you, you’re setting yourself up for a lovely main course of “fucking yourself up” with a side of “are you fucking kidding me?”
The most important thing to do is to identify the injury. Identify the affected body part and ideally have a general idea about what caused it. The key to tackling any injury is knowing once it’s happened and being very honest with yourself about it. Depending on the severity, you may need to pay your local physician a visit if it requires such a drastic intervention.
Next up is the aforementioned taming. You need to realize - now that you’ve identified your injury and its cause - that you may be out for a few weeks. But it’s not necessarily all darkness and woes. If it’s your arm that’s injured, your legs are very much capable of giving you leg, abdominal and cardiovascular training to keep you in shape while your arms recover to whisk you back into working on your upper body. If, alternatively, your lower body is affected by an injury then it might be a good time to switch to upper body workouts for a while to keep moving and not let the momentum go to waste.
Obviously this only applies to minor injuries such as a twisted ankle or wrist. If your doctor advises you against any form of exercise then you fucking listen. Some injuries can be drastic enough to require surgical intervention and subsequent months of physio-therapy to rehabilitate the affected body part. If your doctor says you have to put your leg or your arm in a cast, you fucking do it. If he says you should rub this lotion on there, you do it. If he says you should take suppositories for your injury, you ask your mother for help.
Leave your goddamn ego at the door when it comes to injuries. It won’t do you any good being proud and clinging hard onto your gains. So what if you lose some muscle mass or gain some fat or compromise some strenght? You’ll get it back when you’re up and running again. One of the most beautiful things about the human body is its ability to adapt rapidly. You’ll be back where you left off, and you’ll exceed it.
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