Injury prevention should be one of the first things you learn as an athlete. If you’re an athlete, you will most probably at some point get injured. If you’re an athlete then you’re over using your muscles, joints, your whole body, so there’s no way around this, but there are some injury prevention things you can learn to avoid them as much as you can and to overcome them. Don’t be scared, you will get stronger after every injury, and most importantly you will learn a lot from them. You have to be smart and make the right decisions. The fact that they can happen doesn’t mean that you have to stop training. That’s why learning about injury prevention and how to deal with injuries is very important when you’re an athlete.

The most important thing in injury prevention and life, is that you take care of your body and mind. Being injured or not, you must always take very seriously taking care after yourself, be smart about this, this should be your number one priority.

As an athlete, injury prevention should be your number one priority during your trainings. You want to avoid being injured so you need to anticipate the intensity of each one of your trainings and how you’re feeling before them so you don’t get to the point where you’re too tired or burnt out because that’s when injuries happen.

Here are a few things that you can do to keep you healthy so you can ensure you’re doing everything in your power in working towards injury prevention.

1. Eat: you need to eat a lot of food to fuel up your energy and to keep you healthy. You must be conscious about two things. One, you are always using energy (burning calories), even when you sleep. Two, if you’re an athlete then you burn even more calories per day. If you are constantly using energy (burning calories) that means that you shouldn’t avoid calories at all. Where you have to be smart is making sure that those calories that you put in your body are the proper ones. You have to ask yourself if the food you are giving to your body is going to give you enough energy, block your arteries, have inflammatory side effects, etc. You have to be very smart about the specific food you’re putting inside your body. I have come to understand, after many years of trying a lot of different things, that when I consume whole foods and rely primarily on vegetables, fruits, spices, beans, grains and seeds I feel the most energetic, am the healthiest, and perform the better throughout the day and specially during my trainings. These kind of foods have very specific properties that can help with different things. Turmeric and especially its most active compound curcumin have many scientifically-proven health benefits, such as the potential to prevent heart disease, Alzheimer’s and cancer. It’s a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and may also help improve symptoms of depression and arthritis. Spinach is an extremely nutrient-rich vegetable. It packs high amounts of carotenoids, vitamin C, vitamin K, folic acid, iron, and calcium. Chickpeas are a rich source of vitamins, minerals and fiber, they are high in protein and offer a variety of health benefits, such as improving digestion, aiding weight management and reducing the risk of several diseases. And so on. You can complement this point with my other blog on “Healthy Eating”. The point is, eat a lot and healthy foods. Check my blog on What Should I Eat for more information on this topic.

2. Sleep: you should never neglect you’re sleep. You need to rest. It’s different for everyone but I have come to realize that for me 10 hours of sleep is ideal, 8 is ok and 9 is good but 10 is just perfect. Now this may seem a lot to you but this is what works for me. You have to see what works for you. This means I almost never party or go out until late because I take my sleep and rest very seriously, as so should you, being an athlete or not. Now if you’re an athlete you need to be very responsible of getting enough rest to ensure you’re body recovers properly after each training, otherwise you will jeopardize your performance.

3. Don’t get drunk every weekend: if you drink some beer or wine once in a while, or have one drink everyday or whatever it is you do and works for you, great. Now, if you are constantly drinking lot’s of alcohol and sodas you will contradict point number 1 on the healthy foods part and you will also jeopardize your performance.

4. Don’t eat fast food or junk food everyday: same as point number three, this would contradict point number 1 on the healthy foods point and it would also jeopardize your performance.

5. Listen to your body: this is one of the most important and at the same time most difficult things to do. During your day and your training you should always listen to what your body tells you. Our body is always speaking to us, we just have to learn how to hear it. When you get a gut feeling about something, follow it, that’s your body speaking to you. If you’re training and something hurts, stop, your body is telling you that you’re doing something wrong. If you’re tired and need a day or two or more to chill, do it. I’ve hurt myself for not hearing my body, more than once, so please listen to your body and take very seriously what it tells you. Since I’ve started to make better decisions in this area and take my rest and recovery as serious as my training, I’ve felt and performed better than ever.

6. Rest: this is pretty connected to point number five but deserves a separate one because it’s just too important to not do it. I already said It before, take resting as serious as you take your training. Your body needs to recover from each day and each training. I used to be very militar with myself about this, I wouldn’t let myself rest even if I was tired because I thought I had to train more to become better. I learned, the hard way, I was wrong. Your body is your most precious thing, it will stay with you forever and it will get you where you want so you need to care for it, respect it more than anything, give it what it asks for. If you train when you are too tired chances are you will injure yourself, same applies if you don’t take days off or don’t take enough days off, or you just won’t perform with your 100%. These means you won’t actually get any better, quite the opposite, you will just exploit yourself, your body, and you’ll just drive crazy in your own mind.

7. Warm Up: don’t ever start a training without proper warm up. If you don’t get your muscles ready for each specific training and just go and jump to it, you will get injured. Check my blog on How To Warm Up For A Workout And How To Cool Down After for more information on this topic.

8. Cool Down: don’t ever stop a training without proper cool down. If you don’t stretch your muscles after each training and just go home, you will get injured. Check my blog on How To Warm Up For A Workout And How To Cool Down After for more information on this topic.

If you do get injured, here are some tips that can be useful to you*:

1. Immobilize
2. Put ice for 15 min (helps with inflammation) and then hot water (stimulates blood flow) for another 15 min 3 times per day.
3. Massage gently but effectively (each time after the hot water) for at least 10 min.
4. Stop training the injured area, train other areas and leave that one alone to recover. Don’t stop training altogether, just don’t move the injured area.
5. I don’t take any pills or medicine because I avoid it at all costs. I look which foods could stimulate my recovery, which could help with inflammation, contracture or whatever it is I need help with. This applies to everything actually, you will always find a food that’s very rich in the specific property you need in order to heal (stomach aches, vomit, etc). Of course there are some cases in which you will have to take antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs or whatever it is you need or your doctor prescribed.
6. Be mindful. Stay positive, think about feeling and being better, visualize you injury recovering, visualize yourself healthy, attract health, use your mind and thoughts in a positive and successful way. This is as important as the other things mentioned above.

*I’m not a doctor so any injury should be addressed properly by a physician in the correct way. This is just me sharing what has helped me in the past in a general way towards the different injuries I’ve had.

When getting back to your training do it smoothly and with injury prevention as your main goal. You can’t get injured again or risk getting injured again because it’ll make the healing process much slower and hard. Your body needs time to rebuild strength, your body needs to slowly start working out again so you can go back to where you were before. Make sure you respect your body and treat it well, don’t neglect it again, make sure that after an injury you don’t just start doing things like nothing happened, make sure you’re not trying to immediately do the same things you did before you were injured, take it easy and start from the beginning again. Do a proper recovery before you start your regular training again, do some mobility and strength exercises for a while, and when you do start your regular training do it as if you were starting for the first time and progress as your body lets you. Here is when you need to apply the listening to your body part the most so that you don’t neglect your recovery work so far.

I’ve had a sprain in my right ankle because of over running, a sprain in my right thumb because of a bad spotted trick, a low back inflammation because of over training, and a broken 5^th metatarsus in my left foot. Luckily I’ve fully recovered and learned from all of these and that’s what I shared here. I hope this helps you and if you have any questions or comments please let me know.

Train and stay safe!