Happy Sunday purples!
It’s that time of the week again! Sunday always seems to come around so quickly. They say time flies when you are having fun right?!!
This week I want to talk about injury and how that impacts on exercise. On Friday 2 weeks ago I tripped over my own feet with an arm full of paperwork and fell on my hardwood floor. It happened so fast that I had no time to try and break my fall and my right knee took the brunt of the impact. I limped for the next 2 days, by Sunday it felt a whole lot better than it had the 2 days prior and so I figured I was on the mend with no need to see a doctor. I decided to test out what I could and couldn’t do exercise wise at my normal Monday training session and adapted my training session accordingly with no issues. I did that for the rest of the week and then decided to have 2 rest days over the weekend instead of just 1 in the hopes of speeding the healing process up. When I went back to training the following Monday, I found that I could do less than I had been able to do the week before and it seemed to hurt a whole lot more. So what did I do? I threw a hissey fit of course! I packed up my bag 5 minutes into the training session and went home!
Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this so that you know that you are not alone if you have ever done this. Having an injury is frustrating! For those of you who struggle to exercise in the first place, I am pretty sure that the minute you have an injury, a lot of you would normally use that as a reason to not exercise for a while. Am I right? I was soooo tempted to do that and I can honestly say that 5 years ago, that is exactly what I would have done. Over the past 5 years though, I have learnt a lot of things and one of them is that just because you are injured does not necessarily mean that you can’t exercise at all. In most cases you can usually find something that you can do. Of course you need to be careful and get medical advice where necessary, but training sessions can usually be adapted to cater for any injury.
The rest of the story goes like this. On the way home I called the doctor and made an appointment for the next morning. When I saw the doctor she gave me a referral for an ultrasound. I tossed up whether I should have more time off training, but when I thought it through, I considered the fact that I have no idea how long it is going to take to get better because I don’t yet know what I am dealing with. For all I know, it could take at least a week to even get a diagnosis by the time I book the ultrasound and then wait for the results to get back to the doctor. Maybe longer if I need to have more than just an ultrasound. So I decided to go to my normal Tuesday training and adapt as necessary. I am so glad I made myself go. I was very lucky that day that I was the only one there and had a full session concentrating on mostly upper body with boxing thrown in throughout for cardio. I felt that I had done a proper workout and was suitably bright red and sweating profusely at the end of it. It was just what the doctor ordered and gave me the boost I needed to continue with my training regime (adapted of course) for the rest of the week.
This week I have been reminded of 2 very important things. Firstly, that whilst exercise is a very important part of a healthy lifestyle, it is not necessary in order to keep my weight under control. As long as my nutrition is good, I am not going to regain weight if I have to have some time off exercise. Secondly, just because I have an injury, doesn’t mean I can’t exercise at all. Yes it is trickier. Yes there are things I can’t do, but there are also a lot of things that I can still do and do them I will!
Have a great week everyone!!
Shari
xoxo