There was a time in my life where I had multiple chronic injuries going on at the same time. I had tendinitis in both of my wrists, a shoulder impingement that had lasted 5 years, and a constant nagging pain in the back of my knee. It got so bad I was unable to do simple tasks such as cooking or walking without discomfort, I couldn’t exercise and couldn’t do any of the things I really love – such as playing guitar or sports.
I had been in physical therapy for years for these issues and never saw any significant improvement. And I know there are many other people out there who are in the same boat that I was. So this article is to explain why traditional physical therapy has not been working for you, and what you need to do instead.
The problem with physical therapists is that they try to attack the particular area of your body that is injured through massage, localized hot/cold therapy, ultra sound, dry needling, etc. Their idea is to try to increase blood flow into those injured areas so they can heal, however their methodology is flawed. There is only so much healing that can come from focusing on the specific injured part of the body.
Blood flow comes from the heart and travels throughout the whole body. The problem that people who are injured have is their injury is not getting enough blood flow. For most of these people, their whole body is not getting enough blood flow, so it is a systemic problem, not just localized to the injury.
When you get injured typically your metabolism slows and you spend some time recovering and your heart rate and blood flow slows down a lot. During that time you are resting a lot and not really being very active. And when the initial injury has subsided, if you are not able to return to full activity – walking a lot, exercising, playing sports – that will create vicious cycle of inactivity which causes a chronic reduction in blood flow and chronic pain and injury.
There’s a reason that pro athletes heal from injuries much faster than the average person. They are already used to getting so much blood flow so the injury is able to heal much faster. Their bodies are primed to recover. So if you want to recover from an injury, you need to train like an athlete to enhance your blood flow.
Now the problem is you may be too injured to train in a typical way – running, lifting weights, etc – however there are still other ways you can increase your metabolism, train your cardiovascular system and strengthen your body. And then when you have created sufficient improvement in the healing capabilities of your body, you can then add traditional athletic training to take it to the next level.
So, here are 3 steps you can take to actually get results in your recovery and rehab. Remember these things need to be practiced every day.
1) Ice Bath and Sauna Combo Training
This is the probably the most potent method of all for recovery from injuries. Did you know that taking an Ice Bath increases adrenaline by 500%? Did you know that Sauna’s quicken the heart rate and relax the muscles (allowing for more bloodflow)? When you train with full body cold and heat immersion you increase your metabolism and cardiovascular performance to superhuman levels. Remember what I said that you need to increase your metabolism in order to recover? There is no better way to do that than by cold and heat immersion combination.
The other primary benefit of this training is reduction in inflammation and increase in hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. In short this training will help you relax and take away the pain associated with your injury. You can then get better sleep which will promote healing as well. Please keep reading future articles so I can sell you more on why you need to do Ice Bath/Sauna training to recover from injuries, but in the meantime, I will tell you exactly how to get started.
Step 1) Go into a sauna for 10 minutes. This should be doable for anyone.
Step 2) After you get out of the sauna, rest for 3-5 minutes at room temperature.
Step 3) Go into the ice bath for 2-5 minutes. After you get out rest for 3-5 minutes at room temperature and allow your body to warm up gradually.
Step 4) Go into the sauna again for as long as you need to feel uncomfortably hot again, this maybe be 20-30 minutes depending on how cold you are after the ice bath. After you get out of the sauna, again rest 3-5 minutes at room temperature – this rest period is very important as going back and forth too quickly between cold can shock your nervous system and make you lightheaded.
Step 5) Back into the ice for 2-5 minutes. Rest 3-5 minutes.
Step 6) You can either go back into the sauna, or warm up naturally after the ice. It’s your choice.
Obviously this kind of training is challenging for 2 reasons. 1) it’s hard. Taking ice baths is very difficult and takes a lot of courage and willpower. 2) you may find it difficult to find a place that has sauna and ice bath.
The answer to both of these objections is how much do you really want to recover? How sick are you of being injured and debilitated? If you are like me, I was so fed up with my situation I would do whatever it takes. And I saw that this method, more than anything else, created immediate improvement in my injuries, pain and mood. So I found a way. Most cities have something like this – some sort of spa or fitness center that has both a cold tub and a sauna.
If you really can’t find anything, you can do a variation of this method with hot and cold showers.
2) Infrared Therapy
Now I imagine many of you have tried Infrared therapy before. You’ve probably gone somewhere that had a red light, sat in front of it for 30 minutes. Paid 25 dollars and left seeing no improvement in your symptoms.
The reason that you had this experience is that you did not use Infrared the way its best to be used. This is not your fault, this is the fault of your provider.
The main benefit of Infrared light is that it increase melatonin in your cells. Watch this YouTube video to learn more about this phenomenon.
The main benefit of Infrared is increasing melatonin, but also increasing Seratonin and promoting relaxation and better sleep. If you are like me, you may have struggled to sleep well when you were injured.
Infrared lamps are actually very cheap (you can get one here on amazon for like 80 dollars: https://amzn.to/49uBAW0), and are highly effective if used while at rest (lying in your bed or on a couch) for a longer period of time (1-2 hours). You will notice an immediate sedating effect (many people find themselves falling asleep shortly after turning on the lamp).
The way you’d use it is to simply lay down in your bed or on the couch, put the lamp 3 feet from your chest and then lie down, take deep breaths in and out of the nose and relax.
3) Eat a high protein diet
Everyone knows that proper nutrition is important for your health and recovery from any condition; however, I think there are large misconceptions about what makes a proper diet. If you google whats the best diet to recover from an injury, people will say eat a balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables. And yes, while vitamin C from fruits and vegetables is important, by far the most important thing you need to consume is protein.
You should be eating at least 100 grams of protein a day and you can go as high as 200 grams (depending on your body weight). Your tissues are made up of amino acids, which are found in protein, so eating high protein will literally give your body the substances it needs to rebuild.
A lot of people like to focus on supplements, certain food items they think will magically give them a cure. But the only cure is to improve your cardiovascular system and rebuild your tissues. The only dietary hack that will allow you to do that is eating a bunch of protein.
The other important thing to note with diet is that if you have extra fat that will make injury recovery much more difficult. Having extra fat will negatively effect your cardiovascular system and will cancel the benefits you get from cold/heat contrast therapy. So in addition to eating high protein, you also need to make sure to eat low calories. For me this is best done by avoid processed carbs and sticking to only whole and natural foods. It’s hard to eat enough steak and bananas to gain weight – however it’s very easy to eat enough pizza.
So you essentially will want to eat less carbs than you are typically used to. Prioritize the protein, eat fruits for vitamin c, and eat some carbs to help you relax – but the most important part of your diet needs to be protein.
Conclusion
The takeaway from this article is stop focusing on the part of your body that is injured, but instead focus on being in amazing cardiovascular health, having great sleep, high energy, high strength and a fast metabolism. The 3 techniques I outlined in this article are some of the best ways to achieve these results. These need to be practiced every day and are only the first steps on the way to full healing, but are the most important.
If you would like to learn more about what you can do to rehabilitate, I can talk to anyone about private coaching (starting with a free consultation call), which you can get more info about here.
Home
