Lots of paddlers have nagging injuries- shoulders or elbows or backs. Many people reach for anti-inflammatory medications to reduce the pain and swelling from these injuries.
However, more recent research shows that this is counter-productive for athletes. It negates any gains from training. The anti-inflammatories interfere with the body's normal process for adaptation to stress.
The body heals itself partly by inflammation. The body wants to send more blood to the damaged area and to increase healing in that area. Anti-inflammatories interfere with the body's natural means of healing the injury and repairing the damage.
Here is a link to an article about why you shouldn't use anti-inflammatories:
http://runnersconnect.net/running-injury-prevention/ibuprofen-and-running/
There are also some dangers from anti-inflammatories, such as dehydration and kidney damage.
So, what do you do if you are injured? Well, the standard advice for injury has been RICE, which stands form rest, ice, compression and elevation. But more recent research puts the effectiveness of ice in question.
Rest is still beneficial though. And I believe that ice can be helpful if used in the following way. Ice the injured area and then do easy movements without weight to bring more blood and healing to the area.
Movement in water, such as swimming or taking a hot bath and then moving around can also be helpful. Many active-rest strategies can be beneficial, such as foam rollers, or easy walking.
Exercises to address muscle imbalance problems such as rotator cuff exercises are what you need to restore the area to balance and avoid future problems. Hanging from a bar helps to create room in the spine and the shoulders and help the body heal from injury.
And you can see a professional, such as a doctor, sports medicine specialist, physical therapist, chiropractor, accupuncturist or massage therapist.
In any case, the priority should be on healing the injury, rather than continuing training. Many athletes are so addicted to training that they don't take a break, even when injured. That's probably why they got injured in the first place- overuse injury from overtraining.
Instead, take some time off until your injury heals and instead of doing workouts, do some active recovery and some exercises and see a professional to get your body back in shape before you return to trainining. Taking a couple of days off from training won't hurt your performance. But, having a nagging, ongoing injury will hinder your performance. Switch your priority from training to healing and work as hard at healing as you do at your training and you will recover.
Here is the link re: anti-inflammatories:
http://runnersconnect.net/running-injury-prevention/ibuprofen-and-running/
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