The Flipside of the Fitness Coin: Dealing with Exercise-related Injuries

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.

Handling the Morning After: The Real Walk of Shame

Raise your hand if you woke up the day after a grueling workout and you could have sworn you thought you were dying from the amount of pain being inflicted on you by your sore muscles. I will assume at least 99.99% of you raised your hand. Which is really weird, because you’re reading this off your computer or your phone, which I’m sure would look really odd to bystanders and onlookers. Put your hand down you are such an embarrassment.

So before we get to the “how” of dealing with post-workout muscle soreness, let’s tackle the “why” of why it happens in the first place. Weight lifting and exercising in general operates on the muscles by means of creating micro-tears (don’t freak out, that’s a good thing!) in the muscle fibers which eventually prompt the body to fix and repair and to make them bigger by increasing their size and adding more muscle fiber so the muscle is able to perform the same exercise next time without experiencing those tears; which is why we always raise the intensity of our workout!

Why is it then that we feel sore? Well those micro-tears prompt your nerves to send out signals which resemble those of pain throughout your body which in turn triggers your nervous system to start funneling and channeling nutrients specifically towards those muscle which now require massive repairs and overhaul in order to be as good as new. Depending on the person, this feeling of soreness can last anywhere between 12 hours and three days depending on how new you are to the whole exercising thing, if it was the first time for you to perform this particular workout or if it was particularly intense.

Now, it’s vital that you be able to distinguish the difference in feeling muscle soreness the day after your workout and the feeling of a torn muscle (not good!). If you tore a muscle, you’re likely to feel it right then and there in the gym or shortly after your workout. You will be in a LOT of pain. It won’t feel normal or something you could just brave through. If it’s a particularly bad muscle tear, your skin in the affected area will turn dark purple on account of the internal bleeding within a few hours. Head to an ER immediately.

There are various degrees of muscle tear which range from low damage that heals within the week to complete muscle rupture which requires surgery and months of recovery. The trick to avoiding this is knowing your limit, don’t push it with extra heavy weights on exercises that put too much stress on your muscles. Have a spotter help you out when lifting heavy weights to ensure you don’t end up crushing your face underneath a barbell. Always, always, always make sure you are performing each and every repetition in perfect form; that is not negotiable. Do not sacrifice form for more weights. Ever.

So now we’ve tackle the why, the how to of taking care of sore muscles is rather simple. First off, make sure you stretch at the end of your workout, taking your time to stretch out the muscles which were engaged during the day’s workout thoroughly. Second, take a cold shower right after your workout, this helps the muscle relax instead of using hot water.

Third, make sure you’re eating a butt load of protein in all your day’s meals, be they breakfast, snacks, lunch or dinner. This is the most essential nutrient your body needs for muscular fiber repair above all else. Consuming whey protein right after your workout and taking BCAAs before your workout or before bedtime can also drastically improve recovery time. Lastly, and this is sort of a given, rest. Nothing will help your muscles heal better than a good old fashion 7 to 8 hour slumber.

With time you’ll find that your body can adapt quite well to handling soreness, eventually the same exercises may cease to cause any soreness whatsoever unless you vary the intensity greatly or utilize new ones altogether.

Pro tip: A professional massage can go a long way in easing any muscle soreness as it triggers increased blood flow to affected muscle fibers; carrying more nutrients and oxygen and whisking away toxins.

Take care, stay safe and have a friend pick you up from the gym after leg day.