Workout and sports injuries can happen to anyone and, when they do, they can be surprisingly debilitating. In many cases, simply waiting for things to get better might not be the best road to recovery.

Here, we’re going to look at the steps you can take to help your body heal and to get back into fitness after you’ve had to take some time off.

Listen to the doctor, first and foremost

You might feel stubbornly inclined to try and get back in the saddle, so to speak, with exercise straightaway. However, if your doctor recommends bed rest, then that’s what you should be doing. Make an appointment with your doctor so you can get a full diagnosis and evaluation of the injury and how much it will affect your ability to stay active. Depending on the severity of the injury, there may be different treatment options, from therapy activities you can do at home right down to surgical solutions that might be worth considering.

Getting help on the way back

Your doctor can recommend treatments that can help ensure that your injury begins to heal and gets you out of further harm’s way. However, when it comes to getting back your mobility and working your way back into a state of fitness so you can exercise again, then extra attention from specialists like Rehab 4 Performance can be highly effective. This can include physiotherapy, performance medicine, and strength & conditioning training to help you steadily aid your recovery and get your performance back closer to where it used to be. Your timeline will depend on the specifics of your injury and general health, but a good physio can help with almost any sports injury.

Be mindful of taking too much rest

Once upon a time, the prevailing wisdom might have been that bed rest is the best thing to get over an injury but recent wisdom has unveiled that this is not entirely the case. In fact, when it comes to things like back and joint injuries, too much bed rest can exacerbate things. So long as your doctor or physio recommends it, even gentle movement each and every day can be a lot better for your chances of recovery than simply lying still.

Pay heed to the mental side, too

It can take time to recover from a sports injury and spending any period of time with a lost sense of mobility or independence can affect your mental health. Talk to your physio about motivation and feelings of self-esteem, as they are likely to have recommendations on how you can manage the mental side of recovery from an injury. Usually, the tips on focusing on and measuring your improvement can help you get a much better sense of how you’re going to be better off on the grand scale, rather than getting bogged down by temporary difficulties.

The tips above are general recommendations and when it comes to the specifics of what you can do, then you need the attention of a doctor or a rehab physio to give you more specific instructions.