Exercise you CAN do after injury...

Today's post: Monday, 6-9-2008

Quite often people get injured in just one hand or arm or leg while their other side is still healthy. And, by using dumbbells, they CAN exercise their good arm or leg etc.

They also may be able to do exercise for both arms when one leg is hurt or for both legs when one arm is hurt.

But the surprising & very little known fact is that the injured arm or leg safely benefits from the exercise also even though you don’t exercise it directly at all.

Of course, you do have to use care NOT to stress your injured side when it’s still hurt & vulnerable. But it IS usually doable.

It makes sense that you want to keep doing regular exercise if you possibly can after you are injured since the benefits of the exercise are so great. And, for some people it’s important to not get out of the habit of doing regular exercise.

But it’s been discovered that even though it’s NOT exercised directly, your injured arm or leg or shoulder also benefits. It does so for sure if you exercise that body part on the other side of your body.

I’ve known this & used this myself for quite a while & am even using it now as I recently hurt my left foot.

Here’s a short, well done article on just this subject that I got today in my email.:

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

"How to Exercise When Injured

By Craig Ballantyne

It happens. You strain your shoulder, sprain your wrist, or even break an arm. Most people think that working out with an injury like that will be a waste of time. But that's plain wrong. In fact, by exercising your strong arm, you can actually maintain - or possibly even improve - the strength in your injured arm.

European researchers put 10 women on a two-month strength-training program for one arm only. At the end of the two months, though the women had done no additional activity with the other arm, they had increased strength in both arms.

Scientists call this the "cross-over" effect. When your brain sends instructions to one arm, the "untrained" arm receives the same instructions. The end result is that you build strength in the untrained arm because of the connection between your brain and your muscles.

So if you injure your arm or shoulder, there's no reason to stop exercising the good arm (provided your doctor clears you for exercise). Just make sure you avoid exercises that would further damage the injured side. You can, for example, continue to press and curl dumbbells with your good arm to keep both arms strong.

[Ed. Note: "Don't exercise while injured" is one myth you shouldn't put stock in. Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne debunks 5 more health myths and shows you how to combat them with his Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system.]"

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There is also another reason for this effect that suggests also exercising the other unhurt parts of you may also be helpful.

When you exercise, your circulation improves all over your body. And, your body releases growth hormone.

That means that when you exercise your legs, your arms get some benefit and when you exercise your arms your legs get some benefits for the same reason.

So, when you are injured, the only part of your exercise that needs to be stopped for sure is for the injured part of your body until it is safe to begin exercising it again with less weight than it used to do safely.

You do have to be a bit conservative with starting up exercise with the injured part & then be careful to build back slowly enough.

But the good news is that by continuing to exercise the other side of your body & the rest of your body that is unhurt, you’ll recover faster & have more strength in the injured part than would have had otherwise.