Sports injury rehabilitation is vital if you are to avoid the dreaded cycle of injury -> long period of unable to train -> return to training -> poor performance -> injured again. It can be extremely frustrating and can lead to far worse situtations.

Yet how many people do you know who rush back and set themselves up for another injury? It should not be like this. If you can learn to use this period there is no reason why you should not return stronger, wiser and better placed to take your performance to higher levels. Where do we go wrong?

There's more to sports injury
rehabilitation than putting your feet up!

On your return to training following an injury try to think as a beginner for the first few training sessions and use them to assess your technique. When you were a beginner you had the building blocks - that is, how you moved your arm or leg - but not the structure of your sports techniques. It may have been that these building blocks were not as efficient as they could have been, see injury prevention training , this is maybe why you sustained an injury. Putting them together to execute the techniques needed for your sport may have put stresses on your joints or muscles if they were not coordinated appropriately.

Sports injury rehabilitation is about going back to the start so you can assess whether your basics were suitable. You will have ingrained habits associated with your techniques that will feel right, but if these were habits that caused your injury or loss of form it really won’t help to repeat them – especially with more effort - in the belief that you are not trying hard enough.

One advantage of recovering from an injury is that it can provide you with instant feedback concerning your performance. It is like an alarm bell that rings if you are doing it in your habitual manner, i.e., wrong again. If the bell rings, STOP! Stop immediately what you are doing and give yourself a few moments to run some checks to see if you are holding any tension in your neck, shoulders or back. When you have achieved this, maintain your awareness in the moment for a while longer before starting your activity again. Immediately you recognise something that tightens your body and prevents a feeling of lightness in your movement, stop and go back to the beginning. It is tempting to carry on with the niggles or aches and pains – I know I’ve done this enough in the past, but as mentioned earlier, all you will achieve by doing more of the same thing is the same end result – the injury.

Be patient otherwise you will go straight back to the situation that got you injured in the first place. Learn from your injury and you will return stronger, wiser and better placed to progress your sport.

If you would like to know more about how to assess your technique and movement patterns you might be interested in my peak performance program with a section on sports injury rehabilitation . It contains a number of procedures for you to assess how you perform in a completely new way!

Want to ask a question? My view of what fitness means and how it can be attained is different to the conventional approach. If there is anything on this page that you would like to follow up please feel free to contact me

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