The Two Most Common Reasons Active Adults Deal With Pain For Longer Than They Should
If you’re used to being active - an injury is your worst nightmare. You have a hard time ‘not doing anything’. You feel lazy, like you have to be doing something. We get it, we’ve been there. Unfortunately it’s this mindset that often leads active adults to deal with pain for longer than they should.
The following are the two most common reasons active adults have a hard time recovering from pain and injury.
1. Not Resting
Tissues need time to heal. Most of the time, even with heavy modifications, we stress the injured tissue more than we should. Sometimes you just have to unload the tissue, let it heal, and focus on a good rehabilitation plan to correct any movement patterns and build strength so that the tissue can handle the when you return to activity.
Example: If running is contributing to your pain, you need to NOT RUN until the tissue has had time to heal and you’ve had time to adequately strengthen other parts of the body so as to not load the injured area when you return to running.. Not run less, run uphill or downhill, NOT run.
2. Going ‘0 to 100’
When we finally do return to our activity of choice, it’s important to ease back into it. This allows us to test the tissues integrity and prepare. Too often active adults want to pick up from where they left off before they go injured - which is an issue if you’ve been laying off the activity for 4-5 weeks.
If you were running 10 miles/day before the injury - you cannot immediately start back at 10 miles a day.
While this seems like simple advice - we see active adults breaking these two rules EVERYDAY and wonder why their pain isn’t going away. Don’t be one of those guys/girls - take some time off - and then ease back into your routine. Your body will thank you for it.
Evolve Performance Healthcare specializes in helping active adults stay active and strong and keep up their active lifestyles. We’ve helped active adults recover from shoulder, back, hip, and knee pain through the combination of manual therapy to help the tissues heal and progressive fitness programs to build functional strength so you can come back stronger than before.