Fitness Tips

• Fitness Training & Advice  
  
  01/03/05 - Prevent the niggles from stopping you exercising
  
  
• Podiatry, Foot & Lower Limb Mechanics
  
  22/05/05 - Foot tips for beginners by Ashley Mahoney
  
  
• Physiotherapy, Injury Prevention & Management
  - coming soon

• Nutrition
  - coming soon
  
  

Prevent the niggles from stopping you exercising

Many people get disillusioned when they get injured & they stop exercising altogether. This is often because they associate the injury with failure and/or because they don’t have a plan to work around the injury.

An injury is simply your body telling you that you need to change the training stimulus on it in some way. From my experience training, most injuries that develop over time are to do with doing too much too quickly, or, a lack of range and control in certain joints. If you stop exercising altogether you won’t do anything to correct the things that caused the injury.

Big injuries (that stop people from training) often start as little injuries that were ignored.  What could have been treated with some simple changes becomes a big problem that takes a lot of effort to overcome.  If you have a niggle talk to your personal trainer and get them to refer you to a good physiotherapist before you expose your dedication to training to the pressure of a big injury.

And remember, there is always something you can do. In conjunction with your physio, your trainer will design an exercise program that will allow you to maintain a base level of fitness that will get you back to peak training quicker when your injury subsides. You might have to undertake some different activities for a number of weeks but long term you will come back fitter, stronger and more injury resistant than before.

^ top