What's up, motivators Taryn?
Here, traditional injury return protocols
have largely over the last few years, been widely disproven.
But here we are doing all
of the traditional methods of dealing with injuries.
Test, ice, elevate, take some antiinflammatories.
But even though these methods have been
studied and shown to be less effective than current methods,
a lot of these traditional methods are still being preached.
The good news is that the current
protocols for returning from an injury will actually get you running or training,
cycling, swimming, whatever it might be sooner and keep you
doing it while you're recovering from that injury.
So all of this time off that people worry about losing a tremendous amount
of fitness can be alleviated and you can actually come back sooner and faster.
Today, we're going to explain the peace
and love method for returning from a running or endurance training injury.
My name is Terryn Gazelle.
In my 20s, I was overweight unfulfilled
and couldn't even run to the end of the block.
Over the following years.
I found endurance sports.
Lost £65, won age groups,
race world Championships, broke records and trained and learned
from some of the best athletes and coaches in the world.
You too, can use endurance sports
to change your life and accomplish your fitness goals.
You just need a system, a system that's meant for us amateurs
who want to be our best while feeling our strongest and healthiest.
My company, Motive offers that system,
and I want to share some of the tips from it today.
Let's get right into it here by sharing
this study that outlines the peace and love method.
Going through the acronym piece,
P stands for protection from the activities that are causing pain.
At the outset, you want to reduce the amount of time
that you spend doing the activities that cause pain.
The E is for elevation.
Over the few days after deciding that you are going to be dealing with this injury
and trying to rehab from it, you want to elevate the limb in the area
that is exposed and injured to reduce the swelling.
That's very traditional, but the A is avoid antiinflammatory.
That is very, very untraditional.
The reason for this is that while
antiinflammatories do reduce the swelling in the near term, in the long term they
actually limit the tissue's ability to repair itself.
The C is for compression.
That is, again, to reduce the swelling and the inflammation.
E is to educate the person who is injured
that the traditional passive modalities like electric stimulation or acupuncture
massage tend not to show a lot of improvement in pain management.
And in the long run, they might actually reduce the likelihood
of the athlete coming back as soon as possible.
Then getting into love.
The L is for load.
You want to actually add load
to the athlete as soon as is comfortable, we're going to get into that.
O is for optimism.
If you're constantly stressed, if you're feeling depressed,
if you're feeling very negative about the injury, if you're questioning
the injury, that's going to send cortisol through your body.
So you want to be optimistic that there is a return from the injury.
A good way to deal with this is by meditating.
V is for vascularization.
This is related to the load.
You want to stimulate a lot of blood flow to the injured area and e exercise.
So practically, what does this all mean?
I actually enlisted the help of a friend
of mine, Brody Sharp, who runs the Run Smarter Podcast.
He also runs the Run Smarter Physiotherapy Clinic.
He's got a couple of tips for that right here.
I would recommend trying to best find your new adaptation zone.
So if you are injured a particular structure, let's say the knee,
there will be a new adaptation zone that if you put your body through a particular
load, it might overload it, it might underload it.
We need to try and find what that sweet spot is based on your symptoms,
based on how the injury responds to that particular load.
And so some generic guidelines for you to follow always exceptions to the rule.
But some generic guidelines would be during exercise, that being running,
cycling, swimming, other cross training and rehabilitation
exercises or strength exercises, any sort of Loading.
You want to make sure that the symptoms are less than four out of ten
during the activity and then afterwards, we want to make sure that everything
returns to baseline quite quickly in less than 24 hours in most cases.
If that's the case and you're following those two rules, we also want to make sure
that the symptoms are improving week by week.
If symptoms are improving week by week, it means that the injury is getting better.
It means your load management is being effective.
So just follow those rules and you should
be returning to running quickly in the most Proactive way possible.
I highly recommend you go and check out Brody's podcast.
I'll put a link in the description below
to the Run Smarter Podcast, one of my favorite podcasts.
Also, at the end of the video,
we'll have in one of these videos that are over on the right another video that we
did with how to avoid injuries with Brody Sharp.
So we've got the peace and love
and Brody Sharp and his guidelines, and we're thinking we need to exercise.
But if we are dealing with an injury, what is the first thing you should do?
Well, the very first thing that I
recommend is if you have a pain that has lasted for three weeks or more and it
hasn't subsided on its own, that's where you need to go to a physiotherapist.
You can work with somebody like Brody online or go see somebody in person.
Now let's say you're dealing with somebody
already or you're about to deal with somebody.
It's good to understand what the broad
guidelines for a good injury protocol actually is because there are a lot
of physiotherapists out there that don't actually follow the current studies.
So generally, what type of protocol should you expect that will get you returning
to running or endurance training as quick as possible?
Well, for the first three to five days,
it is a little bit more traditional, more in line with what you'd expect.
It is take a break from the activities
that cause pain to give that injured area a bit of a rest and a bit of a de load,
and then to bring the inflammation down in that injured area to allow for blood
flow and for actual movement, you want to elevate the injured area as
much as possible, have ice on the area and add compression.
Then from day five or so and that day five isn't a hard and fast rule,
but much quicker than has traditionally been expected.
You want to get back into activities while
you're doing this, it's a good idea to add compression.
So if it's a lower limb injury, you can add compression socks.
One of the best ways to add compression is
by swimming and spending a lot of time in the pool.
Standing even just in like belly depth water is actually more compression than
a pair of compression boots, so being in water is very, very restorative.
Next is to try adding exercise at a very, very low intensity level.
Like Brody said, use the rule of thumb of a four out of ten or lower kind of pain
threshold and no additional pain the next day.
If you're typically going out for a ten K
run, maybe you're instead going out for a three K run.
You're still creating a similar motion
in the injured area while not making it worse.
So for running, you might change to walking.
For cycling, you might change to swimming.
For swimming, you might change to strength.
You want to get movement into the area that is affected so that you can actually
get blood flow into the area and use that four out of ten and no pain the next day.
Kind of barometer to dial up how much you can do it.
Just go by the four out of ten and use that as a metric.
And that might mean that some days you can
actually go up in larger increments than you might expect.
Some days it might mean that you have to dial it back.
A couple of things to add on to that.
When in doubt, if you can't actually do the movement.
If you don't like the substitution, add in strength training and make
a dynamic strength training that is designed for endurance athletes.
I'll put a link in the description below
to our strength training and mobility video courses for endurance athletes.
So even if you don't want to use our app for training, you can get great strength
training, great mobility yoga training that is designed specifically to hit
the imbalances and even them out that endurance athletes tend to develop.
So there's a link in the description below for that.
It's all designed for the specific workouts that you need during race season,
during your off season and your basebuilding season,
what you can use on your rest days and your rest weeks so you can actually
just fill them in into whatever training plan you're currently using.
And this is a really nice substitution
for some of the swim bike running that you might be doing as an endurance athlete if
you are dealing with an injury and then a comment on adding blood flow
to the area, we want to move the area as we've mentioned, but there are some areas
that are harder to add blood flow into and that's typically the lower limb.
That's one of the hardest areas to actually add blood flow because there
isn't a whole lot of vascularization in the lower limb,
which is why foot injuries tend to take a very, very long time to heal.
Now, I know that trigger point therapy and foam rolling is a very contentious
topic to a lot of physical therapists and a lot of athletes.
In my experience,
I've done some trigger point work with just a spiky ball on my foot when I
had plantar fasciitis problem and that was very good for stimulating blood flow.
Studies are very clear that foam rolling and trigger point work does improve blood
flow to an area for about 30 to 60 minutes after you do that trigger point work,
and in my opinion, it can only help the repair process.
Parting Words Motion is lotion.
If you are injured,
don't be afraid to move a little bit and as long as you keep the load fairly
low, It's most likely that that movement is going to help you return to your
running, swimming or cycling earlier than you would have.
You just take an outright rest. Thank you for watching.
Motivators.
If you're looking for a training plan that incorporates these methods that is as
good as a one on one coach, but as inexpensive as doing it yourself.
Check out our Motive training app
that covers triathlons, running races, do athletes.
Swim runs and cycling events.
The link in the description below where
you can check out your customized training plan for free.
Also, if you rather listen to these tips, we also publish these videos in podcast
format on the Terrain's Motive Method podcast so you can check that out.
And if you don't want to do either of those things, but you found this video
helpful, hit us up with a virtual Highfive live by smashing the like button below.
Later. Motivators.