That feeling when you just can’t operate at your optimal best because of soreness or an injury, kind of like what you feel when you’re hungover. So says Lifeaid that calls itself ‘The functional beverage company’, in a survey of 2,000 people in America.
It said that upto 65% of those who work out have had injuries from exercising. On average, people had about three a year, with pulled muscles (68%), ankle sprains (48%), and knee strains (45%) being the most common. Upto 40% of the respondents said they had skipped a party because of this, 39% had opted out of a get-together with friends, 32% avoided dates, and 29% didn’t show up at work.
The reason, the survey hypothesised, was that “60% of those surveyed said they don’t know enough about dietary and recovery supplements to make an informed decision about what process or products can help them. Due to that knowledge gap, nearly half of those respondents (47%) have skipped recovery steps altogether.”
There are really two types of recovery, short-term and long-term, says Dr Raju Easwaran, an orthopaedic surgeon who sees a lot of sports medicine cases. “Short-term recovery can be done at the gym, and is really a combination of stretches, especially important if you’ve been doing strength. The aim of this is to increase range of motion,” he says.
Passive stretching increases the length of the tendon by a few millimetres. It cannot be ignored by anyone, but especially if you’re over 40. Long-term recovery is all about sleep, because rest triggers the release of hormones that aid in recovery. For this, avoid coffee after about 5 pm.
“Listen to the body. The adage ‘No pain, no gain’ has caused a great deal of injury,” he says, adding that it’s best not to look at the person next to you to see how much they’re lifting or at what speed they’re running at. Technique is more important than volume, and never exercise on an empty stomach. “Then, your body will burn muscle, not fat.”
In this column, we demystify the buzzwords in wellness
