Injured but Still Want to Train? Here's How to Do It Safely

Suffering an injury is easily one of the most frustrating experiences you could ever undergo when you’re in the midst of pursuing your fitness goals. One moment you're deadlifting or squatting hundreds of pounds inside of your iron paradise like it’s any other day, when one insignificant shift in your posture sends pain shooting up your spine, and leaves you sitting in the emergency room having your lower back injury diagnosed by a doctor.

What seemed like an inconsequential motion in the middle of a set now looks like it’s going to set back your progress by several months at a minimum, possibly preventing your from training altogether, and certainly eliminating any possibility that you’re going to appear at the starting line of any of the competitive runs you’d lined up for the summer months.

No matter what the doctor’s diagnosis is, you still have every intention of training at whatever level your body can healthily sustain. The only problem is that you have no idea what that level is, let alone how to effectively train around an injury without aggravating it further.

Working in your favor is the fact that your predicament is one that has confronted millions of people before. Many of those people have made full recoveries from their injuries by training through them and preserving most of their strength and conditioning throughout that stage of their training progression. If you follow the proceeding list of steps, you can join them as someone who has successfully trained through an injury and enjoyed fully restored health on the other side of it.

What to do if it’s a fresh injury

Before your injury has been thoroughly assessed by a physician, it is impossible to prepare a strategy for training around it or through it without risking further aggravation of the injury. Fortunately, there is a protocol in place for making these assessments.

PEACE and LOVE

Within sports medicine, the widely accepted method of assessing an injury and plotting a course for recovery is built around the acronyms PEACE and LOVE. Although it sounds indistinguishable from the hippie movement of the mid-1960s, the PEACE and LOVE approach is a practical strategy for protecting the injured area of your body while you continue to exercise with caution. (1)

PEACE applies to the immediate aftermath of your injury

Protection

In order to protect the injured area, you should do whatever you can to limit or eliminate the potential of further aggravating it. This may mean that you’ll need to make use of support methods and devices like tape or braces.

Elevation

If your injured area is an appendage like an arm or a leg, you are strongly encouraged to keep it elevated above your heart as much as possible to reduce the potential for unnecessary swelling.

Avoid

You want to avoid becoming overreliant on anti-inflammatory methods to control your pain, because they may slow your body’s repair processes. This includes both ice and NSAIDS like ibuprofen, naproxen, or aspirin.

Compression

Wrap your injured area in bandages or tight clothing that keeps it compressed and reduces swelling to the area without fully restricting the flow of blood to the area.

Education

Before you make a return to training, make sure you thoroughly educate yourself about your injury, including a timeline for your recovery, and the importance of remaining active during that time.

LOVE occurs after your injury has been diagnosed

Load

Operating from the standpoint that movement aids the healing process better than rest, you are encouraged to very carefully introduce loading (i.e., weight and resistance) to your training of the injured area.

Optimism

This is the straightforward decision to adopt a positive mindset as you remain motivated, acknowledge your progress, and avoid being overly fearful about your situation.

Vascularization

Aside from strategic loading to improve the healing of the affected area, you should also engage in activity that stimulates blood flow to the injured region, and also throughout the rest of your body.

Exercise

This broadly refers to the guided rehabilitation of your injured area in a way that tactfully addresses strength, mobility, balance, and then sport-specific skills if you happen to play a sport.

Returning to training

Once your guided physical therapy is over with and your therapist gives you the green light to return to training on your own, that’s when the real work begins. This sort of work is both physical and mental, because you’ll be working through an injury that is still hindering your movement, leaving you haunted by the memory of what your body was capable of before the injury occurred.

At this stage, you are at the bottom of a metaphorical mountain and beginning the slow climb to full recovery that may take weeks, months, or even years. It is a sobering scenario to find yourself in, but you can gradually work your way back to your training summit if you follow a careful strategy.

1. Do a careful assessment of your body’s abilities

If you’ve been on a restricted movement schedule for months, you should expect that all of your physical capabilities will have declined to some degree. This means that you may not be able to do as many pull-ups as you once could, even if the injury was to an unrelated area like your hamstring. 

Moreover, if you were to do a pull-up, you might even discover to your chagrin that you tend to involve your legs in the movement in a manner that might cause you to re-injure your hamstring if you were to do pull-ups the way you used to.

For your first series of full-blown post-injury workouts, be prepared to lift far lighter weights than you ordinarily would, to perform far fewer reps than usual, to jog at a slower pace, or to use whatever means you can to first establish what your body can handle comfortably. From here, you can slowly increase your effort level to ascertain the uppermost limit of what your body can handle comfortably while you protect the injured area.

2. Set realistic goals for yourself

It would be wonderful if your torn quad was in proper working order for you to participate in your community’s annual 10K run, which you have been competing in for nine years consecutively. It would also be amazing if the shoulder that is three weeks post-surgery had just enough range of motion for you to swim the 50-yard-butterly segment of your masters swimming team’s 200 medley relay at the state championship meet.

As incredible as these scenarios sound, the rational part of your brain probably knows that the injured part of your anatomy would probably suffer another critical hit if you were to chase recovery on such an aggressive timetable. 

A far more realistic goal would probably be to slowly add push-ups to your weekly tally until you recover enough strength, endurance, and range of motion in your injured shoulder to make your way back to performing bodyweight dips once a week. In other words, come to terms with how long a safe recovery will probably take, and set incremental goals as you grind your way back to optimal health.

3. Modify your training

Early in your return to training, much of your efforts are likely to be devoted to restoring basic movements in some of your afflicted areas while still completing satisfactory workouts that train your entire body over the course of a week. If this is a mandatory facet of your approach, you may need to find some effective workarounds in order to accomplish the task. 

Unfortunately, this may require you to be less of a purist about your workout style. For instance, if you’ve been a free weight or calisthenics purist for the last six years, your injury may prevent you from immediately returning to a regimen of barbell squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, or even ordinary push-ups. If you’re a runner, it may also be true that your body will need to recuperate a little more before it can once again handle the pounding of your heels on pavement.

At times like this, it’s helpful to unlearn some of the stereotypes that may have tainted your opinions of apparatuses like machine weights, or treadmills and other cardio machines. Studies have shown that machine weights are as effective as free weights at inducing muscle hypertrophy, while cardio machines can be a very helpful training replacement for the real world movements they simulate, especially when it comes to aerobic training and fat loss. (2) (3)

As long as you prioritize compound movement patterns, you should still be able to complete a highly beneficial full-body workout even if you’re restricted to the use of machines. Likewise, cardio machines can be utilized very effectively for boosting your heart rate, and helping your body to undergo several of the physiological changes that are necessary for runners to eventually endure long outdoor runs. (4)

4. Make rehabilitation part of your training

While you’re strengthening your body and recovering your strength and range of motion, make sure that you continue to include the rehabilitative movements that were prescribed by your therapist in your training regimen if you have been advised to do so. This way, you are directly addressing the needs of the injured area while restoring strength throughout your body.

One of the best examples of this would be if you’ve had shoulder surgery, or suffered a shoulder injury that requires the alleviation of tightness and recovery of movement in the very complex muscles surrounding the ball-and-socket joint of your shoulder. 

In practice, this may mean including the face-pull exercise and the machine rear-delt exercise at the beginning of your workout as a way to actively engage and stretch the muscles of your shoulder and back so that they are loose enough for you to perform other exercises like military presses with adequate range.

Additionally, you may also need to add external and internal rotation exercises for your shoulder at the end of your workout to further help your body to regain its full utility and flexibility at the same time that you’re building strength.

5. Adjust your nutrition plan for muscle growth and injury recovery

If you’re already a veteran of the gym, you’re probably well educated about the benefits associated with the combination of creatine and protein. If not, then you’re in luck; protein and creatine are just as helpful for injury recovery as they are for improving muscle size and strength, and accelerating the elimination of body fat. (5)

First of all, creatine is excellent at accelerating the recovery of any muscle size and strength lost to atrophy by maxing out your phosphocreatine stores, and imbuing your muscles with all of the muscle they need to recover their size rapidly. Certainly, by maxing out your practical protein intake at 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg of body weight — or 0.73 to 1.0 grams per pound of body weight — you will have your body optimized for muscle maintenance and recovery throughout the recovery phase. (6)

To these tried and true methods of muscle building and preservation, there are a few other supplements you may want to add. First among them are collagen peptides, which are a form of protein that is especially potent at reviving functionality in tendons, ligaments, and joints, while alleviating pain in those regions. Omega 3 fatty acids are also beneficial due to their capacity to reduce harmful inflammation and protect muscle tissue from atrophying. (7)

Speaking of protecting muscle tissue, beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate — commonly known as HMB — is a leucine metabolite that is used in medical settings to preserve the muscle tissue of infirmed patients. Fortunately, Transparent Labs makes HMB available in a pairing with creatine monohydrate to help you maximize muscle recovery and muscle preservation with one supremely helpful supplement. 

Not only that, but creatine is also strongly linked to the remediation of depressive symptoms due to the storage of creatine in your brain, and the energy boost it supplies you with. (8) This is never a bad thing to have on hand when an injury has slowed you down, and left you feeling vulnerable to feelings of self doubt.

The safe path back to muscle sufficiency

It goes without saying that injuries are traumatic to active people in unique ways, including the psychological toll associated with having your level of physical activity drastically reduced. These feelings are understandable, but the two things you don’t want to do are extend your stagnation any longer than necessary, or attempt to rush your recovery and worsen your injury.

By taking things slowly, training consistently in a cautious and approved form, making progress wherever you can, and subtly shifting your nutrition strategy to focus on injury recovery, you’ll ensure that your time on the injured list won’t last a single day longer than it needs to.

Sources

1. Dubois B, Esculier JSoft-tissue injuries simply need PEACE and LOVEBritish Journal of Sports Medicine 2020;54:72-73.

2. Haugen ME, Vårvik FT, Larsen S, Haugen AS, van den Tillaar R, Bjørnsen T. Effect of free-weight vs. machine-based strength training on maximal strength, hypertrophy and jump performance - a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2023 Aug 15;15(1):103. doi: 10.1186/s13102-023-00713-4. PMID: 37582807; PMCID: PMC10426227.

3. Jayedi A, Soltani S, Emadi A, Zargar MS, Najafi A. Aerobic Exercise and Weight Loss in Adults: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Dec 2;7(12):e2452185. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.52185. PMID: 39724371; PMCID: PMC11672165.

4. Singh G, Kushwah G, Singh T, Ramírez-Campillo R, Thapa RK. Effects of six weeks outdoor versus treadmill running on physical fitness and body composition in recreationally active young males: a pilot study. PeerJ. 2022 Jul 27;10:e13791. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13791. PMID: 35915754; PMCID: PMC9338755.

5. Burke DG, Chilibeck PD, Davidson KS, Candow DG, Farthing J, Smith-Palmer T. The effect of whey protein supplementation with and without creatine monohydrate combined with resistance training on lean tissue mass and muscle strength. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2001 Sep;11(3):349-64. doi: 10.1123/ijsnem.11.3.349. PMID: 11591884.

6. Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, Schoenfeld BJ, Henselmans M, Helms E, Aragon AA, Devries MC, Banfield L, Krieger JW, Phillips SM. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. Br J Sports Med. 2018 Mar;52(6):376-384. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2017-097608. Epub 2017 Jul 11. Erratum in: Br J Sports Med. 2020 Oct;54(19):e7. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2017-097608corr1. PMID: 28698222; PMCID: PMC5867436.

7. Kavyani Z, Musazadeh V, Fathi S, Hossein Faghfouri A, Dehghan P, Sarmadi B. Efficacy of the omega-3 fatty acids supplementation on inflammatory biomarkers: An umbrella meta-analysis. Int Immunopharmacol. 2022 Oct;111:109104. doi: 10.1016/j.intimp.2022.109104. Epub 2022 Jul 30. PMID: 35914448.

8. Eckert I, Lima J, Dariva AA. Creatine supplementation for treating symptoms of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Nutr. 2025 Dec 14;134(11):947-959. doi: 10.1017/S0007114525105588. Epub 2025 Nov 5. PMID: 41189312.