Transcription:

Melanie Cole (Host): As the pandemic restrictions begin to lift, many people will start to resume playing sports or other vigorous activities. How do you do that and avoid injury at the same time? Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole and joining me today is Kyle Mrohs. He's a Physical Therapist at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital's Golden Valley Physical Therapy Clinic.

Kyle, it's a pleasure to have you join us again today. Tell us, a lot of us have been cloistered, maybe we were out there doing our vigorous activities, getting our exercise. What are some of the consequences of laying off your chosen sport or exercise for a while, and then jumping right back into it? What have you seen?

Kyle Mrohs, PT, DPT (Guest): Mostly, is actually people getting injured from trying new things that they did during the lockdown. So, their gym was closed. They couldn't get together with their friends to do their normal stuff. And so then they're looking at social media or just seeing different things that they see on TV and they say, hey, I'm going to try that for the first time. Or I could do this 10 years ago, why don't I pick this up again? And so they're getting into it and then they're finding after a few days of doing it or a couple of weeks or even months; that they're starting to get like aches and pains with maybe a newer thing.

Host: Yeah. So I'm seeing it myself, as an exercise physiologist. I see that some of my clients become a little deconditioned and then it's really something you want to get back into it. So, let's just start with what's the best way to get back into it, whether you're an athlete or whether you're just someone that really loves to exercise at the gym and you haven't really been there in awhile, what do you want people to know?

Kyle: I think the biggest thing would just be go low and slow. Go easy on yourself when you're first getting into it. I think people have a tendency to go full bore, zero to 60 and say like I'm going to do everything on the first day. And that type of thing usually leads to not feeling so good, whether it's soreness or an actual injury itself. So, if you kind of take whatever expectations you have and half them or quarter them. I think if you do that, you'll find that you can get into it without having adverse reactions.

Host: When you say, take it slow. Not everybody knows what that means Kyle. As we look at warming up, as we look at maybe starting with some things that maybe were a little bit less than we were doing before this pandemic began, what are you talking about, when you say start slow? Are we just do in treadmill? Do you want people to go down in weight or athletes to maybe shorten up their workouts? Give us some specifics when you say that.

Kyle: So, let's go with just walking, right? So, maybe before you were walking on the treadmill for a certain distance, maybe instead of if you were used to doing a mile on the treadmill or 20 minutes, you start out by just doing 10. If you were lifting weights, instead of thinking what your max was, like, your heaviest bench press or your heaviest squat, you start with something smaller and just try it again once more to see does that feel good? Can I do this? You don't want to try to do like your max best effort on the very first day when you're first getting started. And I think the last thing would be just listening to your body. So, if you're trying something, even as it's something that you're familiar with and you've done in the past, if something feels creaky, not good, it doesn't feel like it did before, maybe because you just haven't done it for awhile; listen to that sensation and kind of observe it, and don't just try to push past it and being real stubborn with yourself because that's going to cause injury.

Host: Well, then tell us some of the red flags that people should know. You said maybe not feeling that well or being sore. What are some red flags that we've really over done it?

Kyle: So, like normal muscle soreness that we would expect to see after let's just say a good workout. I feel like I really put in a good effort there, that should last maybe 24, 36 hours max, and then it should fade and you should feel back to normal. If you feel real profound soreness, you're having a hard time walking, sitting down in a chair or even the restroom, you know, that really hurts, that was an indication that you did too much. And then that soreness might last up to three days. Other types of things would be not just muscle soreness, where you can kind of touch something, you're like, oh, that feels like it got worked, but like a deep ache inside. And that might be an indication that the joint got affected or irritated. And then other types of things would be redness, it's swollen, it's really, really tender to touch. Those would be things that you did a little bit too much, too soon.

Host: Something I'm sure that we have all felt at some point. So, once we feel those things, to determine the extent whether we really injured something first, tell us, what we can do at home. If we're starting to feel that soreness, we feel a pain in our elbow if we're a tennis player or if we haven't been out on the golf course, something that we can do at home. And then when you think it's really important that somebody call a professional such as yourself and find out if we did something worse than just normal strains and things.

Kyle: So, I think that the easiest thing to do to see if it really requires extra help, or if it's going to fade it on its own is just to rest. Even as frustrating as that can be, once we're really motivated to get back to doing what we want to do. If it's hurting, you should listen to that sensation, listen to that pain and just hold off from doing it.

If it's just a basic, you know, an overdue muscle soreness type thing, like I said, that should fade away within one to three days. But if it stays around, even if you're not doing that activity, that's usually a sign that something's going on that could require either taking some type of medicine, seeing a doctor or possibly having imaging done or something like that. But if it fades within that time, you can probably draw it up to just muscle soreness.

Host: Something I know that we have all felt at some point. So, when we're doing things at home, ice, heat, brace, you mentioned rest. That's great. But if we do feel just a little soreness that maybe doesn't require rest, do you have some modalities Kyle that you like better than others? If we feel sore muscles, do you like an Epsom salt bath or do you like ice or do you like a heat? You know, give us a little bit of a rundown on physical therapy and what we can do at home to help ourselves, even with that just generalized soreness.

Kyle: So, I definitely myself use ice and heat on a regular basis. And some people get caught up in the oh, which is better for this particular sensation. I'll say this, with most things, it doesn't really make a difference. If it feels good, it feels good. And that's totally fine. In the case, that you have something that's red, hot, swollen, that's something where you don't want to add more fuel to the fire and put some heat on it. You're going to want to ice it. So, an example would be if you were trying running and you rolled your ankle, or maybe you thought that you kind of tweaked your ankle a little bit; if it looks red, swollen, it's a little bit puffy, right, you want to think about that like a fire in your body and you want to cool it down.

You want to ice it down, so you don't want to jump in the jacuzzi. You don't want to put a hot pack on it. You want to try to ice it. That's kind of the main indicator for using ice over heat. Other than that, whatever feels good, feels good. I definitely use Epson salt baths. I've even used topicals, Icy Hot, Biofreeze, any of those types of things. They should help just make the muscle soreness, not so bad.

Host: Wow. That's great advice now why don't you wrap it up for us? Give us your best advice for conditioning in general, gradual progression. Maybe somebody's been laying off for this whole pandemic time and wants to get started with exercise. Maybe we put on a little bit extra weight during it. Give us your best advice for starting a program, for starting exercise, getting involved in an activity, and while you're doing that, your best advice about returning to sport, whether it's gymnastics or golf or tennis or whatever your chosen sport is, getting back into it safely so that you can perform and don't have to lay off again.

Kyle: So, I would say good for you for making the decision that you want to get more active because sometimes that mental hurdle is one of the hardest parts. So, once you've made that decision to get started with I would say set your expectations a little bit lower than you normally would. Because once you get started on this, if you go too fast, too soon, even if you're familiar with the activity, you may find yourself having to take more time off because you overdid it and that's totally normal.

And it's something that we see all the time. So, try to set your expectations relatively reasonable. And that might be instead of doing a hundred pushups a day, you do 20 pushups a day, or instead of walking 10 miles, you walk just one mile. Start with a nice foundation that you feel proud of yourself for doing. Stay consistent if you can, because that's one of the hardest things and you'll start to see benefits over time. As far as progression, again, being reasonable with yourself is going to be the ticket to being able to do it for a long time. If you've made some type of unreasonable thing, I'm going to be able to do X and X within this time; and it's just too much to do; it's going to cause you to feel stressed out and you're going to feel like you're not doing what you need to do. But if you have something small, like I'm going to do one extra repetition a day, I'm going to walk one house further or one tree further than what I did the other day.

And you kind of just do that over time from one week to the next, you'll see a benefit from it. And you'll feel good about yourself because you made those small goals and you were able to reach them. So, I think if people stuck to that, that would be a good way to start a new habit and stick with it.

Host: What great advice. I could not have said it better myself. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us today and really helping us get back in to exercise, sport, activity and how to avoid injury if we've been laid off for a while. If you have questions about a physical ailment or injury, please call Henry Mayo Physical Therapy at 661-200-1559 or you can visit us online at henrymayo.com for more information, and to get connected with one of our providers. That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Please remember to subscribe, rate, review this podcast and all the other Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital podcasts. Share this show with your friends and family, on your social channels, because we are learning from the experts at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital together. I'm Melanie Cole.