Continuing off of the last post regarding loading & capacity of your tissues, it's important that we piece that together with advice that we give clients when it comes to injuries.

It's common for people to want to cease physical activity when an injury occurs.  I've went over the reasons why this is a really bad idea before, but in a nutshell this strategy simply neglects the human body as a whole (including our brain and mental health).

To piggyback off the last post and the video that was shown, what "rest" when an injury occurs does is diminish your capacity.  

The capacity of your cardiovascular & respiratory system is downgraded.  What this means to you is if you've ever had even just a 2 week layoff, you come back, and it feels like you're starting all over again.

The capacity of your muscles to adapt to stress is diminished.  What this means to you is that you're at a greater risk of not only re-injuring the affected area, but the rest of your body as well.

Just a few weeks ago I was talking to a client who has been experiencing low back pain as of late.  My first question was "how many days are you engaging in planned physical activity outside of the two days you workout here?"  Their answer was "none".  

We discussed ways that the client could become more active throughout the week.  They added inclined treadmill walking a couple of days per week.  Then a couple of days became a 3-4 per week.  Then the feedback from the client was "I feel great on the days that I'm moving more than on the days where I'm not and am simply at work all day".  We're in the process of making some sort of planned movement being a daily thing to see if it continues to result in more pain-free days.

When an injury occurs, it is simply that the capacity of the site where the symptoms are present has been overloaded.  Doing our best to narrow down the variables as to why this happened is key, and then definitely addressing the cause will help with care and decreasing the chances of injuring the site again.  However, it's not the only treatment.  

Move.  Move often.  And then move daily.