You've been training regularly, putting in the work, and seeing progress with strength and fitness goals. Things are going great and then - bam! - an unexpected injury throws a wrench into your plans. Whether it's an acute injury (broken bone or rotator cuff tear) or an overuse injury (shin splints or tendonitis), you're going to be sidelined from your normal workout routine for a bit.
While injuries are frustrating, they're a part of life. How we deal with injuries can have a big impact on our healing process and overall sense of mental and physical wellness. Mindset is an extremely important factor in recovering from an injury. It may feel easier to indulge yourself in a self-pity party, but self-pity isn't going to help the healing process! Instead, try the following ideas to stay positive when recovering from an injury and make the most of your downtime.
- Talk to your doctor or physical therapist to set realistic goals for your recovery and return to activity. Visualize yourself being healthy and achieving those goals.
- Keep an optimistic mindframe by creating a positive, healing mantra to repeat to yourself if you find yourself feeling down, such as "I give my body permission to heal during this time" or "I'll come back stronger from this injury".
- Accept offers from others for help and support. So often, we feel we are independent enough to do everything on our own. Allowing others to help us reminds us that we have people in our lives who care about us!
- Celebrate the small victories: Track your progress on a calendar or journal, and write down things you can do now that you couldn't do last week or last month (for example, lifting a household item to an overhead position, having an improved range of motion, or being able to perform a particular exercise that you previously didn't tolerate due to pain).
- Work on weaknesses (as permitted by nature of injury). For example, if you have an ankle injury, you probably can't squat, jump or run, but there are plenty of exercises you can do without using your ankle, like doing floor-lying core strength exercises and seated upper body strength work such as bench press or dumbbell strict press. Instead of lamenting the loss of lower body training time, focus on the gains you can make in other aspects of fitness.
- Catch up on other aspects of life. If you can't do your normal training, find something else to fill your time that makes you happy. Maybe it's making time for catching up with friends or family, reading more books, doing crafts, attending music or cultural events, or using a language app to learn or refresh your skills for speaking a different language.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember with having an injury is to take things one day at a time. Healing from an injury does take time, but you will get through it with patience and a positive mindset.
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