Injury prevention and rehabilitation techniques are designed to help maximize long-term strength gains and properly manage unwanted aches and pains that may result from exercise or physical training.

Remaining injury-free is most likely at the top of our priority list as adults with active and stressful lifestyles. But are you implementing the right mindset and strategies to achieve that goal in your fitness regime? With a little foresight and proper discretion, you can save many weeks, even months, of lost training time later.

As GymnasticBodies Founder Coach Sommer says: “In my program, you do not train on an injury – period. It has nothing to do with coddling the athletes and everything to do with economics.”

Catching Injuries Early

If a slight injury begins to crop up (often initially manifesting itself as mild discomfort) you can stop it from growing into a major issue. By immediately and aggressively treating this problem – sometimes with complete rest, and more often with a combination of rest and rehab – it can usually be resolved within 1-3 days. Time lost in training? Minimal. Strength lost? Minimal. Skill level lost: Minimal. Overall it becomes a minor speed bump in training that has had no significant effect on the progress of an athlete.

Now consider the reverse of this approach, if left untreated the issue MAY continue to grow and worsen until, regardless of your degree of mental toughness, it will become physically impossible to effectively train. Significant ligament, cartilage, and other joint integrity issues are usually involved at this stage of the injury – often with long-lasting or even permanent reductions in performance. The window of recovery for an injury of this magnitude is measured in weeks at a bare minimum and more often in months.

GymnasticBodies Training is a surefire way of stopping potential injuries in their tracks!

On Recovery Time

A commonly overlooked area in injury rehab is not the time to heal, but factoring in the time necessary to rebuild back to pre-injury strength and skill level. This usually operates on a one-to-one ratio. Now the total training time lost to is quite substantial. For example, 1 month of healing and an additional month to rebuild strength and skill back to pre-injury levels or 2 months of healing plus an additional 2 months to rebuild strength and skill to pre-injury levels.

You can easily see the dramatic effect a serious injury requiring 3-6 months of healing plus an additional 3-6 month rebuilding phase can have on your everyday life as well as your fitness endeavors. Also, let’s be quite clear that this extremely proactive approach in injury treatment is not an assertion that all minor injuries will eventually flare up into major problems.

Most minor injuries can be worked through without danger of future repercussions. The only problem with this aggressive approach is that at the time of the initial issue it is impossible to accurately separate a minor injury that will go chronic later from a minor injury that will resolve itself. It is, however, much easier to afford a few days of missed specific training now compared to months of lost training time later.

The GB Online Courses are designed to prevent injuries, not promote them.   

Embracing the Inevitable

At some point in your fitness or athletic career, you will get injured. This is part of being a human but, on a positive note, the requisite healing or rehab of one area often presents the opportunity to focus on improving another area of relative weakness. If you can’t train upper body, focus on leg strength. Can’t train legs? Then focus on upper body. The list of potential combinations is endless. The key is striving to achieve the correct balance between stress and recovery. Knowing when to push and when to back off is an art and, as such, must be practiced.

The GymnasticBodies injury prevention and rehabilitation techniques are designed to help maximize long-term strength gains and properly manage unwanted aches and pains that may result from exercise or physical training.