Training with an injury?

Recently I was faced with the choice of whether I should or should not train with what I self-diagnosed as a cosmetic injury. SELF-diagnosed being the key words here. What I thought was a simple bruise and scrape after falling on my knee at the tide pools, turned out to not be so simple. Well, in hindsight it may have been, but I made the choice to train with the outward injury, which quickly turned into an internal one. Oops? The worst part is, I knew better. My instinct told me not to train legs at all, but my inner drive told me to just go lighter than usual. Should have followed my gut on this one, and many others tbh, but that’s a whole other post.

So, when do we push through pain and choose to train and when do we focus on healing? If you are anything like me your training is just as beneficial to your mental health as it is to your physical. Some days even more. This is where the true dilemma comes into play for me. After learning the hard way that training through serious pain wasn’t the right thing to do even for my mental energy, this is what I learned.

If you would caution someone else not to train with their injury, you should listen to your own advice. If the doctor tells you that you can only do “toe taps”, that doesn’t mean deadlift. If your form is off in a way that your body is screaming something is wrong, it’s begging you to stop. When in doubt, skip the day and reassess tomorrow,

The bottom line is this. You only put yourself out of commission even longer when you ignore a significant injury. You only have yourself to blame when you think of ways around the doctor’s orders. I discovered other ways to channel my anxiety and ultimately added more tools to my toolbox. I killed my upper body and ab days. There are days, weeks, and months that sometimes the body NEEDS to repair itself and that’s okay. You will be stronger both physically and mentally if your learn to recognize when that’s the case and be content to let it do just that.