Recovering From an Injury. Conventional Wisdom is WRONG!

A few years ago I had a shoulder injury that wouldn’t go away.

It hurt to throw a blanket in the morning while making my bed.

Pulling a door open would hurt my shoulder.

I spent a lot of time resting but it wouldn’t go away.

When I was growing up an injury like this led to rest and an ice pack.

Unfortunately, everything you’ve been told about recovering from an injury is wrong.

An ice pack might help numb the pain, but does it actually help you recover from an injury?

RICE Method

Conventional wisdom will tell you to use the RICE method to treat an injury.

Rest your injury.

Ice your injury.

Compress your injury.

Elevate your injury.

This is all, supposedly, in an effort to speed up healing.

Unfortunately, it is outdated and wrong.

“Coaches have used my “RICE” guideline for decades, but now it appears that both Ice and complete Rest may delay healing, instead of helping.” -Dr. Gabe Mirkin, creator of the RICE method

How I healed my shoulder

To fix my shoulder injury, I did the exact opposite of RICE.

I didn’t rest and I didn’t ice the injury.

I focused on getting a lot of blood into that area on a daily basis.

Every day in the gym I would do shoulder presses. It didn’t matter what I was training that day. I used a machine like this:

I would start out with no weights on the machine and I’d do shoulder presses, about 20 reps, to warm up that joint.

After some rest I would repeat it with a very small amount of weight.

We’re talking embarrassingly small. Like 5 pounds, maybe 10. Untrained people off the street could manage this weight.

I would do this 3-4 more times keeping the weight small. If 10lbs felt good, I’d stay there.

I wasn’t trying to build muscle here. I was trying to get blood flowing into my shoulder - the exact opposite of what RICE does.

Even with a low weight like that, after 3-4 sets with a light weight your shoulder will get warm, blood will be flowing into this area, and it’s exactly what we need to speed up the healing process.

Injuries need blood flow and this got it done.

Pain signaling

Now you may be thinking, wouldn’t lifting a light weight with an injured shoulder prolong the injury?

It can, if you’re not smart about it. That’s why you need to use a small amount of weight. If you’re not sure of the weight you should be using, shoot small.

Leave your ego at the door and don’t worry about being the guy doing 10lb shoulder presses.

But the sure way to know you’re doing this right is to pay attention to pain signaling.

When I would do my warm up set with no weight and my 3-4 sets with a small weight, the pain would start to go away over those sets.

If the pain is getting worse, stop and reconsider the exercise you’re doing. Message me if you need tips.

But if the pain is going away, you’re on the right track. Keep the weight small, keep getting the blood flow generating reps in, and do it often (across days, not necessarily throughout a single day).

Injury location

The one issue here which can make things tricky is where the injury is located.

In an area like a shoulder where many muscles are located which can handle a lot of weight (in normal circumstances), low weight, high rep shoulder presses work well.

But in an area like a wrist, which I’ve also injured before, we have to adjust to get blood flowing into that area.

For a wrist injury, I would do something as simple as closing and opening my fingers into a fist and if needed, add a little resistance with something like a grip trainer.

The earlier points still apply. Start small (opening and closing a fist) and add resistance (grip trainer) if you need it to get blood flowing into that area. Again, focus on pain decreasing as you do more reps.

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