WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO RECOVER FROM AN INJURY?

1. COMMON CAUSES OF INJURIES

You need to be particularly careful when you first start exercising as injuries can occur if you haven’t trained before and your body has been sedentary for years; a lot of your muscles needed to help support the body during exercise actually won’t work effectively when you start out and therefore all the compensating muscles will try to take the load.  A lot of other injuries are due to weakness and tightness through repetition by doing an exercise too much, leading to repetitive strain injury. 

2. THE BEST APPROACH 

It completely depends on the injury and how far along it is.  If you feel a niggle very early on and you rest immediately, it may heal itself. Running or training through an injury is not going to help; what you really need are exercises specifically designed to help your body rebuild itself. However, if you push through it and you’ve carried on training, or if it’s a severe injury, I would recommend rest and seeing a professional; they should be able to guide you through rehab with specific exercises over the required period of time. 

3. HOW LONG CAN YOU EXPECT TO RECOVER FROM AN INJURY? 

How long is a piece of string?!  No injury is ever the same and everyone is so different when it comes to exercise and injury recovery, which is why you cannot cookie-cut recovery programs because nobody is the same.  Ideally, you should get professional advice if you are injured, either a personal trainer or ask for a referral to a qualified physiotherapist from your GP.  Trying to diagnose yourself through the internet or peers is a dangerous route; these things are so individualised that you may not react like others to treatments and therefore may make it worse.