Being injured is NOT fun!  Your immediate concerns are usually, “How can I get the pain to go away?” or “When will I be able to get back to normal?”  These are great questions and we address them in separate articles.  But you also need to be thinking more actively (and proactively) about what you can do to help the process along as quickly as possible.

First, you should understand a little bit about what happens when you are injured.  On a basic level, some structure (ie. ligament, tendon, muscle, etc.) is stretched, pinched, torn or otherwise damaged.  This causes pain and inflammation (swelling) and triggers your body’s response to begin healing.

Normal body tissue has two main components: a stiff part and an elastic (flexible) part.  Different types of tissue (ie. muscle, tendon, ligaments, etc.) have different proportions of stiff and flexible components, depending on what they are designed to do.

When the body begins the repair process, it typically uses the stiff (collagen) fibers to create a tough, cross-patterned repair ‘patch.’  The good news is that this is a strong way to repair the injury.  The bad news is that it is not as flexible as the original tissue.  Knowing this repair process arms us with important information we can take advantage of to give ourselves a better repair and minimize the risk of re-injury.

Gentle, consistent and frequent stretches during tissue healing will help to reduce spasm (muscle contractions due to the injury) and will also provide a stretch to the repairing tissue, helping to change the cross-pattern (stiff) repair to a more parallel pattern which is more flexible.

Pressure can help this ‘re-aligning’ process and using your thumb or a couple of fingers to apply pressure in a slow, massaging fashion along the direction of the tissue fibers can re-direct the healing, leaving a more flexible scar.  However, over-stimulating the scar with too much pressure can cause further inflammation and keep the scarring process active.

Once you have begun to address the scar healing, starting to actively move the joints around the injury through their full range of movement will get the muscle to fully contract (tighten/shorten) and stretch (lengthen).  This will further help the healing and scar re-alignment process, maintaining good mobility in all the tissues surrounding an injury.