Tips to improve your everyday lifestyle and stay fit

Have you ever suffered from an injury or muscle pain that has made your everyday routine feel almost impossible? Most people are familiar with this experience. Whether it’s an injury on their back or neck, knee or an elbow, wrist or ankle. Even small injuries have the power to take us out of commission for a few days. However, more often than not, these minor injuries can be avoided. And even when they occur, they don’t have to turn into long-term hindrances. You just need to know how to treat a sore body properly for optimum recovery time.

Many people think that suffering from a sore body would prevent them from being active and working out. However, this is far from the truth, in most cases avoiding physical activity will only increase the pain and longevity of the condition. This is because the body reacts to inactivity by decreasing muscle tissue and bone mass, which in turn will lead to increased stiffness, soreness, and pain. 

Therefore, the trick lies in staying active 

Continuously and gradually improving your fitness is the way to go (yes, even if you have suffered from an injury). There are also psychological advantages to this; your body will produce hormones that will reduce pain and improve your mood.

It is critical to understand that there is no such thing as bad or harmful activity. The disadvantages appear only if you exceed your limits through excessive exercise and strenuous activity that places an unusual strain on a specific body part, leading to a sore body.

Graded activity means starting at the very basic level of your ability, in terms of fitness, and upgrading over time. A fitness routine based on graded activity is all about avoiding extremes, which is key for both avoiders, and overachievers. 

The avoiders are couch potatoes, people who are unmotivated and unwilling to exert their bodies. When faced with sore bodies after an injury, they avoid exercise out of fear of added pain.

Achievers are the people who have a tendency to overestimate their abilities and take on too much. When they feel pain, they interpret a sore body as evidence that their bodies are not cooperating. They then lose interest in the activity and give up. 

The concept of graded activity is therefore based on exercise sessions with a pre-set amount of repetitions or amount of time, increasing slowly. This avoids the usual ‘push-crash’ cycle of over-exercising or not exercising at all due to concern of relapse or pain.