This past few weeks it seems that many of the conversations on fitness and injury recovery have been more frequent. I am not sure if it is from the colder weather or cedar fever, but the topics on aches and pains seemed to increase. When the people that are in the 40 plus age groups jump into the conversation they can also complain that growing older is not for sissies. The variables that comprise injury recovery can amount to a wide variety of methods for rehabilitation. You have the advice that a person received from a medical doctor, or therapist, to a person that had success from administering treatment passed down from their grandparents, or advice from a brilliant flashing light one night that came to them from out of the dark reaches of space. These are a few of the conversations that seem to be going around between those injured and recovering individuals.
There is a theory called the “half-life” of fitness and conditioning. The theory states that the amount of fitness, strength, or speed, you have trained for over the past six months to reach a new level of performance will decrease by half if you take a month off from training. The half level is not necessarily taken as a literal amount. If you are lifting 200 pounds and take a month off your level will not drop down to 100 pounds. It means that you will return to a level that probably started at six months ago. Think of losing half of the gain that you have made from that starting point. If the lifter started at 150 pounds, and can now lift 200 pounds, then after a month of not lifting the lifter can probably lift 175 pounds. If you started at running 10 minute mile times, and after six months you are able to run a nine minute mile, taking a month off from running will find you running 9:30 minutes per mile. After two months off the return is once again the half live and will be 9:45 minutes per mile. After three months you will be back to square one of a 10 minutes per mile time. The one thing that is in your favor is that when you return to training it will only take you three months to get back to a nine minutes per mile time instead of the six months it took the first time.
Injury recovery will vary with the severity of the injury. A fit, or strong, athlete will recovery in a much faster time than a non-conditioned person. An example is when I was a rehabilitation specialist at West Point and we had injured cadets come through our program. It seemed that the medical doctors had a set date that they would do knee surgeries. One cadet came in five weeks before the date and we gave him a program of strengthening exercises prior to his surgery. Another cadet came in about one week before the date scheduled for surgeries. The first cadet was back to normal duty after two weeks from surgery. The second cadet was not back to full strength for close to six weeks.
