If you are a fitness lover, from time to time, you might pull a muscle or over-extend yourself. It is, then, time to do things differently. Read on to discover some tips for treating sports injuries.
When you embark on your fitness journey, one of the things that you hear quite often is the importance of incorporating warm-ups and cool-downs into your routine. Warming up and cooling down correctly before and after your exercise session is one of the best ways to help make sure that your muscles are supple and warm ready for action.
Seek Help
Even when you are warming up and cooling down correctly, you can injure yourself during a fitness session or during a game. Injuries are common in team sports like basketball, football, and many types of gymnastics.
So when it comes to taking care of your sports injury, if it is not severe enough to get to the emergency department but more severe than what you can deal with at home, the best place to head to is urgent care. You can get there a diagnosis, fast treatment, and even recommendations for referrals.
Remember PRICE
Another tip for treating a sports injury is to keep PRICE in mind. This is a basic acronym that can help you deal with most sports injuries, sprains, and other minor muscle issues. PRICE stands for protection, rest, ice, compression, and elevation.
Protection
One of the first things you’re going to want is to protect the area from sustaining any further injuries. You can use support with some light bandaging, depending on the type of injury you suffered.
Rest
As much as possible, you must rest the affected area and reduce your physical activity. If you have hurt your knee or your ankle, a walking stick or a pair of crutches can most likely help reduce the weight you are putting on it. If you injured your shoulders, elbows, biceps, or triceps, a sling can often be an excellent way to offer support.
You must remember you are only doing this for a short period of time, and if the pain seems to have been reduced, you can consult a physician to see if you can head back to your fitness routine.
Ice
An injured area will often begin to be swollen and tender to the touch. Carefully wrap some ice in a towel or a cloth to not touch the skin and cause extra pain. Keeping an ice pack on the affected area for around 20 minutes every few hours will help reduce the swelling.
Compression
While you are adding ice to help reduce the pain and the swelling, a compression bandage can also help stop a compression bandage to ensure that you have a limited amount of swelling in the area.
It is essential to ensure that your compression bandages are not too tight and worn at night unless otherwise advised.
Elevation
Try to keep any of your injured body parts raised above your heart as much as possible. This can help to reduce the swelling a bit and also can go a long way to reduce the pain.
Wear Protective Gear
Another tip is to treat a sports injury is wearing protective gear. If you’re still recovering from a sprain or would simply like to prevent it from happening again, add protective gear to your workouts. Speak to a trainer if possible to get their advice according to your unique situation. If your injury was sports-related, consider whether using protective gear could have helped to prevent it in the first place.
Ice Baths
Ice baths are another homeopathic treatment to recover from a sports injury. Commonly, athletes in many sports use ice baths to reduce muscle pain and soreness. This practice is called cold water immersion or cryotherapy. With only 10 to 15 minutes in the bath, the ice water quickens recovery, reduces muscle and tissue damage, and improves motor function.
The above tips for treating sports injuries can help you be proactive and decrease your injury time. Make sure to keep PRICE at the forefront of your mind, engage in healing practices, and seek help when you need to. This can, also, help you transition to working out after your injury.
To a Fitter Healthier You,
The Fitness Wellness Mentor
