Sports Injury and Dealing With It

If you play sports, it is likely you will sustain an injury while playing. Depending on what you do after you sustain your injury will determine how long it might take to recover. Most injuries require rest and rehabilitiation, baring broken bones or torn ligaments / tendons. Putting an ice pack on your injury is the first thing you should do. This is to help slow down swelling that takes place. Don't ignore your injury if it requires the hospital to have it checked out. I recommend skipping painkillers at first, so that any injury can be properly assessed.

Once you determine that the injury is painful yet mior, you can continue to ice it on a regular rotation. An example would be 20 minutes on ice 20 minutes off. Having multiple icepacks to use can be very handy for this. I personally like the gel cold packs that can also be used as hot packs. After the first 24 hours this can come in very handy. You can start looking into over the counter medication to help with the discomfort.

You can start using a hot pack after the first 24 hours. Using a hot pack will help to promote blood flow to your injury which help you to heal faster. Again you want to shoot for 20 minutes on hot 20 minutes off hot. 20 minutes of hot followed with 20 minutes off of hot. Then begin again. You need to stay off of your feet and not stress the area. After a few days you will want to stretch things out by doing some simple stretching.

Massage therapy can also help many types of sports injuries also. Using a combination of deep and soft tissue massage can help your muscles to heal faster and reduce your scar tissue. At this time you can now begin to do some basic therapy to slowly get back into shape. While you are laid up, you can use resistance bands as a great way to get into shape.

Slowly work your way back into exercising, don’t rush it or you can expect to be laid up even longer. You should take it slowly and as your pain subsides, beging to increase your activity again.