Which kind of “fit person” are you?
The kind of plans out an entire week/ month/ season of workouts or trainings in advance?
Or the type who only plans what days they’re going to work out but wings it when they get to the gym?
Or the type who knows that I want to go to the gym but just place it by ear on when they go and what they do?
Or the type who wants to be active but has no idea where to start in the fear of trying to plan some thing or go in without any experience is holding them back from ever starting?
Regardless of where you are on your journey towards true health, wellness and performance, let’s talk about a few tips that apply to everyone from the perspective of injury prevention, safety, and recovery, from the perspective of a doctor of physical therapy who sees people unintentionally over a training and under recovering on a regular basis.
First of all, it is important to understand that a lot of injuries are due to overuse of a particular area of the body. Overuse can be due to repetitive frequent motions (like cycling or running or swimming) or even compensations that are keeping an area of the body that is already weak or injured, “protected” by heavily relying on another area.
Either way is important to allow heavily used area of the bodies to recover properly before firing them back up for heavy use again. This can come in a couple of ways, some people choose to rest an area of the body by doing an active light recovery, which would look like a high mileage distance runner taking time to just go out for a short run every couple of days, between all of their long runs. Or someone who lifts weights opting to do a light weight high reps day between working towards heavy PR‘s. Or even taking time away from whatever you’re specifically training to do an active recovery day that just involves going on a walk or doing some light yoga or maybe even resting completely from formal exercise.
Another way that people choose to rest and recover areas of their body is by only training certain muscle groups on each day. You will often here people who go to the gym talk about bicep day or back day or chest day or leg day and that’s because they cycle through different areas of the body to allow the ones that they’ve specifically worked recently to have a rest before working them specifically again.
Recovery also looks like proper nutrition and sleep incorporated into your otherwise active lifestyle. To maintain and allow muscles to recover properly, it is important to replace glycogen and proteins within the first 45 to 60 minutes following a work out. It is also important that you allow your body to have enough actual sleep each night because while you’re sleeping, your body is working only and specifically on recovery of your mind, internal systems, and musculoskeletal system.
If you’re interested in having a doctor of physical therapy evaluate your training schedule and make recommendations for a safer training and better recovery, or if you don’t know where to start and would like guidance, or if you’re dealing with pain and are interested in a full specific diagnostic evaluation to begin to address your pain from the root cause of the problem today or if you have questions, please DM or Contact us!
📧 offtheblockpt@Gmail.com
☎️ 864-561-5493
💪🏼Our three step process to your recovery💪🏼
We use a personalized 1:1 approach to:
Relieve your pain
Identity and address the underlying root causes
Give you tools to stay pain free long term
✨ We also offer virtual consults/ treatments and injury prevention programming ✨
📲 DM for more info