I'm looking for some advice on good advises to recover from certain injuries over a long term periods. They are: - tibial stress syndrome - osgood-schlatters - patella tendonitis - dislocated kneecap - acute bicep tear (third time) Unfortunately, I ran out of physio insurance a long time ago. The free physio I got at Canada Winter Games told me to do squats, and that's basically about it, but I can barely bend my knees so squats aren't much of an option. I'd really appreciate any and all advice as walking normally again is a pretty serious goal of mine! Thanks.
The best advice is rest. Also, find a chiropractor to realign all your joints, etc... Of course, seek professional help.
Holy crap! That's a frightening list of injuries (makes my ones seem tame). You really do need specialist medical attention. Is there any chance of this through a national health system? Referrals to specialists via your doctor? Sadly, the only advice I can give you is to be careful. You've already built up a nasty set of injuries, and so any rehabiliation will need to be gentle and frustratingly slow -- otherwise you'll just get more and more injuries, in a downward spiral of compensation. I know this much from my own experience: Begin rehab early Be disciplined about it Be patient during your convalescence from sport Learn from your mistakes and start protecting yourself from future injuries (learn good fitness habits) I'm afraid you knew all that already. I hope you manage to overcome this. Good luck
Agreed... but I've got to do active recovery to actually recover. When I tore my bicep the first time I took a month off from using my arms at all, and experience 0% recovery. I went to the gym today and learned that without my usual 4 pre-exercise ibuprofin, I cannot run, bike, elliptical, or lift any weights with legs or injured arm. So basically all I could do was an hour of ab-work, heh. I'm going to try swimming tomorrow, see if I can do that. I'm extremely disheartened, especially since I'm a training/workout maniac... if anyone has ANY exercise advice, I'd love it!
Well I hear swimming is good for rehab, but depends on what you have i guess. I would try seeking more professional advice and try to design a schedule which would help in a speedy recovery.
Here are some general thoughts: 1. Evaluate all the movements and positions you use during the course of a day. This includes how much time you spend sitting, how much time you spend lying down, how much time you spend standing up, what (if any) movements you use to do cardio, what (if any) movements you do for strength training, what kind of movements you train during badminton practices, etc. Pretty, list these things down in the order of either how much time you spend on them or how much force you do when you perform them. 2. Compare the movements and check to see that opposing movements are balanced. For example, many people train their horizontal pushing skills (bench press, pushup) more than their horizontal pulling skills (rows or facepulls). This leads to imbalances in strength which leads to poor posture and all sorts of problems. 3. Since your legs seem to be the problem here, let's look at that in more detail. One common imbalance in the legs is strong quadriceps and weak hamstrings. This is because in most gyms you'll see three common machines for leg strengthening: the leg extension, the leg curl and the leg press. These machines are terrible. The leg extension trains the quads in isolation -> a movement and loading quite unlike anything you'll do in real life. However, I know from experience that this exercise is very easy to increase in strength numbers, but when I used easily rep out 150+ on the machine, I can't say my leg function was particularly amazing in real sport situations. The hamstring curl machine. The problem is that the hamstrings function to extend the hips in addition to curl the leg, so if this is your main hamstring exercise you'll miss out on an important function. Also not a very good functional movement. The leg press. The problem here is range of motion. With a shorter range of motion you keep you mechanical leverage good so you can support massive loads in the quad dominant portion of the movement. So... you get a strength imbalance at the knee. Basically, the problem with strength imbalance is that if you can accelerate a limb in one direction, the opposing (antagonistic) movement has to be able to decelerate that limb. If the opposing movement is too weak to absorb that energy, it'll spill over into deforming the tissues - not so good. 4. Soft tissue work. Muscles are covered in fascia, and injuries or imbalances often result in adhesions forming in the fascia as the body attempts to prevent more injury in the short term. The problem is, when you're trying to relearn movements, adhesions in the fascia will inhibit or modify movements so that the movements won't be learned well -> this could lead to future injury if you don't deal with this problem before intensifying your activity again. The best way to deal with this is to get a good manual therapist, but barring that try looking up self-myofascial release techniques. 5. Fish oil. Unless, you eat fatty fish every day, there's a good chance that fish oil can help a lot. It is a miracle food supplement - for example try looking it up on pubmed. The main benefit for you is its effects on inflammation - it'll make your joints feel super-lubricated. Great stuff! Anyways, that's it for now. There's probably more to discuss, but doing the above could probably help. Basically just be smart about what you do, and keep your long term health in mind. Don't worry about losing fitness if you take an extended break. Really, it only takes a few months to get back to great shape after time off. Good luck!
Stretch, stretch, stretch.... I stretch at least an hour each day. It has done wonders for me and my friends, as we have much much less injuries.
taking 4 iboprufen before a workout is foolish, as it will dull any pain you feel, so youll prob injure yourself more often.Pain means stop. The burn of doing weights isnt really the same in my book though, but you shouldnt need anti inflamatories to get throught that. also, taking them all the time like that can have some unpleasent side effects. Like gastric erosions and stuff. And looking at the big ol list of injuries you got there, id say the habit may have contributed to some. anyway. eat loads(of healthy food obviously), rest loads , stretch loads and see a physio.thats what id say.
Since you've described yourself as a "workaholic" I do hope you give some rest to your body and refrain from heavy workouts that may worsen your condition. It may be very difficult for you to stop your physical routines but some rest may be good for your recuperation, although you seem to experience otherwise. I'm merely saying out as a non-medical person and out of commonsense. If, in fact, the 'drug' that you're taking has the adverse effect of dulling your senses to the extent that you don't feel the pain, it may further worsen your situation in that you are tempted to work even harder. This could be disastrous. I would take the suggestion to really seek specialist advice before venturing further. I certainly hope you'll be able to recover soon and continue to enjoy your daily activities.
Thank you for your comments... they're very helpful. And the excessive ibuprofin thing was so I could make it through the 8 months of training camps/tryouts prior to the Canada Games and to get to and do well at the Games themselves. I burned myself to the ground for that event, but it was SO worth it. Stumblingfeet - It's been identified that I'm very weak in the hamstring and the part of hte quad which supports the kneecap, mostly out of favouring once I started to become injured. The only exercises I've been given to fix this is squats, but they are too painful and I do them incorrectly anyway out of favouring. Since leg extension/hamstring curl are no good, what do you recommend? Also, I'm a vegetarian, do you know of any vegetable replacements for fish oil as I'd very much like a little lubrication! Thank you so much.
