By Caroline Connick | Staff Writer
Injuries. We’ve all been there.
All over campus you can find football players with ice taped to their shoulders, soccer players with knee braces, and dancers on crutches. For athletes, injuries simply come with the territory. However, if an injury is not treated properly, it is likely that it can cause permanent damage.
In my personal case, I sprained my ankle when I fell out of a sissone jump at a dance rehearsal and I couldn’t walk for a week. Once I could walk again, I went straight back to teaching the pee-wee team at my dance studio. That was a big mistake.
I hardly danced at all in that class, but that didn’t stop my foot from becoming bruised and swollen again.
My doctor said that since I had specifically sprained my ATFL, my ankle was a lot more likely to roll again, even after its initial healing. So, I took a further break from dance, hoping that rest and physical therapy would literally help me get back on my feet sooner.
But what can you do during that time to take care of your body? How do you keep the other muscles vital to your sport well-exercised? It’s very important to always keep your body active even when you physically can’t participate in athletics for some time, otherwise the deterioration of certain muscles will set you far back from the performance level that you were at before you got hurt.
The first thing you can do is to shift your focus to the parts of your body that your sport doesn’t normally exercise much.
As a dancer, the majority of my muscle is in my feet and legs, so I used my injury as an opportunity to use the fitness room in Rogers to work out my arms and abdominals. The fact that there are so many different machines in there made it very easy for me to work out for a long time without agitating my injury. Since there’s also an area for stretching, I could continue to work on my splits so I wouldn’t lose my flexibility. The gym can still be a great resource for campus athletes, even when they’re hurt.
As your wound starts to heal, it’s helpful to gently and gradually work it back up to the performance level that it was at prior to the injury. When you have a sprained ankle, for example, it’s smart to carefully point and flex your foot even when it is still in a splint. Once you’ve went a few weeks being able to walk with minimal pain in the ankle, you can try exercising your legs again by using stationary bikes and going for walks.
It’s very important to know your limits while you exercise while injured. If it seems like a lot of time has gone by and your injury still doesn’t really feel any better, just be patient. There are cases in which an injury seems like it’s not improving at all for a long time and then all of a sudden it will feel better. So if something you’re trying to do is hurting you, just don’t do it. Try again another time. Eventually your injury will completely heal, and since you remained active during your time away, you’ll be able to return to your sport much easier than you would if you hadn’t.
