Rehabilitative Exercises: How Do They Help After an Injury?

Posted by sudam on Oct 04, 2022 in Blog

At some point in life, we might have experienced an injury to one or the other body part, and it can be a muscle pull, ligament tear, or muscle strain. When you get an injury, you experience redness, swelling, and pain in that area.

If the injury is mild, it will wear off within a few days, and you tend to get to your routine. But severe injuries can take a long to heal, and it might even lead to chronic pain and delayed healing and might also lead to some deformity or difficulty in movements. Injury rehabilitation becomes very helpful for faster recovery without any extra damage.

1] What is muscle rehabilitation? What is the aim of muscle rehabilitation?

Muscle rehabilitation is restoring the muscle to regular activity after any injury. The healthy muscles compensate for the injured muscles. Thus, there can be general pain or swelling in the surrounding areas. The muscle strengthening training, along with the ankle and neck rehabilitation exercises, will help to reduce the inflammation and fasten the recovery.

Aim of Muscle Rehabilitation

• Pain management and to reduce swelling:

The pain worsens the injury, increases healing time, and hinders the movement of the muscles. Muscle rehabilitation helps improve blood circulation, which helps reduce swelling: more blood circulation, less inflammation, and pain.

• Motion improvement:

Muscle strengthening exercises improve the tenacity of the muscles and make the muscles strong. With strong and toned muscles, the movement of an injured muscle improves drastically. No matter the age, condition, or extent of injury, rehabilitation helps improve muscle movements and keep them functional for a long time.

• Developing strength and endurance

Regular muscle rehabilitation makes the muscles strong and does not tire quickly. You do not need to take breaks between activities because of the pain. There will be minimum or negligible pain with regular muscle rehabilitation.

• Coordination of brain and body:

Your mind could be strong enough to bear the pain, but the muscles do not work because of the injury. Regular muscle rehabilitation restores muscle function and improves coordination between the brain and body.

• Functional rehabilitation:

With a long duration of bed rest, the muscles, bones, and joints affect the motility of the person. With guided rehabilitation exercises, you can restore your body’s normal function, strengthen the muscles and prevent muscles from further damage.

2] Why should you not skip Rehabilitative Exercises after an injury?

It is commonly seen in human behaviour to follow a particular routine for a brief period and later discontinue it for various reasons. But skipping the rehabilitation sessions might have severe implications for the body and its function.

• Increase in pain and swelling:

With no rehab exercises, the inflammation tends to increase with the slightest movements or exertion. The blood flow reduces to the injured area, which might lead to water retention in the injured area. This will increase swelling and pain.

• Reduced range of movement:

With excess inflammation, the muscles become sore, and with the slightest movement, there is discomfort or pain. This affects the range of movement. The movement that seems easy on a regular day might seem like a task after an injury.

• Repeated injury on the injured area:

The injured muscle is weak and does not contract and relax as it should. Thus, sudden movement or shaking might lead to repeated injury to the same area.

• Long-lasting pain:

Rest alone is not enough to recover the muscles. With no recovery exercise, muscles tend to remain weak and inflamed, which causes an increase in pain.

3] Benefits of Rehabilitation

There are many benefits of rehabilitative exercise. Let’s start to understand them and see how beneficial they are.

• Reduces chronic pain:

The rehabilitative exercises restore the original muscle movements and strength. It keeps up the muscle function, and thus, there is reduced pain.

• Promotes faster healing:

With regular rehabilitation exercises, there is a reduction in swelling and inflammation. With reduced inflammation, there is adequate blood circulation, which provides the required nutrients for healing.

• Improves motility of an injured area:

The exercises tend to relax the sore muscles, loosen them and make them strong. This helps in improved motility of the muscles of an injured area.

• Prevents future injury to the same area:

The strengthening exercises make the muscle strength that prevents any future injuries around the same area of the body.

• Relief from pre-existing injuries:

Pre-existing injuries might make it difficult to perform normal activities with over-exertion. It can have chronic pain and inflammation. But rehabilitation exercises for such injuries will reduce chronic pain and improve muscle movement.

4] Muscle Rehabilitation workout

• Rehabilitation after a shoulder injury:

After a shoulder injury, slowly start with stretching of the joints and muscles. Once the joint gains back the movement, start with light weight training to strengthen the shoulder muscles. Start with shoulder raising and relaxing, shoulder rotation, and shoulder extension exercises. Later, exercising using weights or dumbbells, or kettlebells will help strengthen the shoulder muscles. A shoulder rehabilitation exercise can be a great relief to your muscles.

• Rehabilitation for ankles:

With ankle injury, it is mainly that the ligaments are injured. After the recommended rest, do free ankle movements followed by weight-bearing exercises like squats and lunges. Free ankle movements like stretching the ankles against gravity, rotating the ankles, and toe movements can help recover the muscles.

• Rehabilitation for back injury:

Back injury takes the most time to heal. The spinal cord is supported by this part of the body, which is the most sensitive part of the body. Slowly start with the muscles releasing around the inflamed area and stretching. Once there is enough mobility in the lower back, do bending and twisting exercises followed by strength training for the lower back. Exercises involving bending forward, backward, twisting to both sides, and rotating the lower waist help gain strength in the back muscles.

• Rehabilitation after a traumatic brain injury:

Brain injury might cause damage to the functioning of the other body parts too. First, identify the extent of the injury and start brain injury rehabilitation. The rehab exercises for brain injury involve the body and brain coordination movements. Simple exercises like walking in a straight line and backward or sidewards help the brain and body. Simultaneously, the impact of injury is seen on any other body part.

• Rehabilitation of sports injury:

Athletes frequently get injured despite being fit because of the rigorous training. A wrong move can cause an injury. Giving rest to the injured part is very necessary. After the rest, slowly start the muscles releasing exercises and stretching, followed by weight-bearing exercises and strength training. Getting back to routine practice might take time without the sports injury rehabilitation workout.

It is strictly advised to perform these exercises under the supervision of the certified trainer and the doctor. They are the best people to know the extent of injury, the approximate time for recovery and healing to start, and the rehab exercises required.

Recovery after an injury: Things to know

Be it a sports person or a normal person. We cannot escape from injuries. Muscle recovery needs time. But if the injury is severe, rehabilitation exercises make it very easy to heal. Only exercises will not fasten the recovery. Taking time off to rest and reset the body is as important as exercising for rehabilitation. The certified personal trainer is the best person to recommend the time to reduce your rest and start the rehab workouts.

 

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