Injuries getting you down?

Happy Friday everyone! I just wanted to say thanks for following this blog. We have been featured on Fat 2 Fit blog, available here. I was also contacted by a Women's Health online editor, interested in posting us in their online edition. It's so great to see so many people be health and nutrition forward. So anyways, I thought today I'd invite a close friend of mine to write a guest blog for me. Her name is Kali Engels, and she is a Certified Athletic Trainer. I have called her on a couple of occasions for advice on various aches and pains and she has been tremendously helpful. Here's her article below, and even though this is a guest spot, this was written by her and you need written permission to publish this content elsewhere.

I was honored when I was asked to write a guest article for the “fitness is fun” blog. Not only do I believe fitness is fun (and I am on my own fitness journey to lose some excess weight), but I think I have some pretty interesting information I can share with the world! I am a Certified Athletic Trainer currently working with Division 1 track and field athletes, so most of this information is going to be from first-hand experience.

I was asked to write about what to do when injuries occur. Most of us just decide to stop working out, that’s the easy way to get rid of an injury right? Well, sort of…You definitely need to give the area that is injured a break, but that doesn’t mean you should go sit on your couch and eat potato chips all day! You can still continue your fitness journey, you just have to find something that doesn’t aggravate your injury.

Let’s say, for example, you have shin splints. Well if you have had shin splints (and I have) you know they SUCK, they don’t just kind of suck, they REALLY suck…it gets you down, so down that you just want to give up and throw in the towel. Obviously your body is telling you it doesn’t want to be pushed anymore, right? Wrong, what your body is telling you is that you tried to do too much too soon. So how do you get rid of them? Well, time is definitely a factor, and you should definitely not do any activities that put stress on your shins, so no jumping, no running, no squatting, etc. As a general rule of thumb I always tell my athletes that if your foot is making contact with the ground, don’t do it (well except walking, you can’t really get around that…). So what does that leave you ask? Actually quite a bit! Getting an injury like this is actually kind of a blessing in disguise. You are forced to get out of your comfort zone and start a new routine. When you get into a routine your body gets used to it and you no longer see the results you saw when you first started (we can go into why in a different post!).

So your injured, what to do now. Well hop on that two wheeled device that you have to pedal around, yup, dust off that old bike, pump up the tires and get out on the trails! If you REALLY want to push yourself do an interval workout on the bike. Here is an example of a great interval workout (it even gets my athletes working hard!!):

5 minute warm-up

6-10 cycles (depending on fitness level) of:

40 Seconds pedal as FAST AS YOU CAN!!!

20 Second recovery (get your heart rate back to normal)

5 minute recovery

6-10 cycles of:

30 Seconds pedal as FAST AS YOU CAN!!!

30 Seconds recovery

5 minute recovery

6-10 cycles of:

20 Seconds pedal as FAST AS YOU CAN!!!

40 Second recovery

5 minute cool down

The best part about interval training is that it gets your body burning calories for up to 24 hours after your workout! AMAZING!!!

If you don’t have a bike, jump in the pool. The best part about a pool workout is that you can do so many different things! If you like to run, throw on a flotation device and run in the pool, you may not go very far, but by golly you sure are working hard! Don’t like to run? No big deal, take a swim! Even if you can only doggy paddle, you are working pretty much every muscle in your body! Can’t swim very well? No biggie, grab a kickboard and do a workout on the kickboard or join a water fitness class! Pools are also good to workout in when you are injured because you are much lighter in the pool. Because of the buoyancy concept, when you are in deeper water there is less pressure on your joints. PLUS, with hydrostatic pressure, if you have an area that is swollen the water can actually help push the swelling out of the injured area, giving you more motion and decreasing the amount of time it takes to heal the area! Isn’t water great??

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I can go on and on and on about all the different injuries, what you can do to get rid of them etc, etc, etc. But I’m sure that would be super boring, unless of course you are suffering from that specific injury, so I will spare you the boredom, and if anyone has any questions regarding a specific injury please feel free to ask (maybe I’ll even get to write a few more articles!) and I will do my best to answer!   

Kali Engels is a Certified Athletic Trainer currently assisting the Student athletes of the Huskers Track and Field and Cross country teams at the University of Nebraska.  She finished her Undergraduate degree in 2010 from Iowa State University.  Kali has worked with athletes at: The University of Wyoming, Laramie High School, Iowa State University, Drake University, Ames High School and The University of Nebraska.  In her spare time Kali likes to hang out with friends, ride her motorcycle and of course work out!