When you’re an athlete, especially a high-performance athlete, injuries are a hazard of your lifestyle. Injuries can be debilitating, but there are certain things you can do to improve your healing time. Here are our tips for remaining positive and coming back stronger than ever.

1. Be Realistic About the Situation

Athletes are generally very goal-oriented and strong-willed by nature, continually striving for higher standards and pushing their limits. This is great in terms of competition but not ideal when you’ve been injured. The fact is, after an injury your body needs rest. Don’t deny the obvious: oftentimes pushing through the pain will only worsen the problem, which could leave you with more time off or not being able to go back to your sport. Taking your healthcare practitioner’s advice in terms of rest and rehabilitation and putting all your effort into healing is the most effective way to get back to doing what you love—and fast!

2. Maintain Light Activity and Mobility

When you have an injury, it is important for you to remain lively and mobile to the extent that you are physically able. It’s easy to let yourself feel defeated and sorry for yourself, laying in bed all day. But don’t let yourself do this. Once you are cleared for certain activities, maintain a schedule of light exercise and workouts that will get the rest of your body moving. Especially for athletes used to training daily, being able to continue this routine of daily activity is essential to remaining positive and, ultimately, helps speed healing.

3. Nourish Your Body

Maintaining proper nutrition is essential to helping your body repair—not to mention, making you feel better. Just because you can’t train fully, doesn’t mean you get a pass on your nutrition and diet regimen. Ask your physician or nutritionist if there are certain vitamins or supplements that could help promote healing for your specific injury.

For example, if you have a bone on the mend, extra calcium is a good idea. BodyHealth’s PerfectAmino™ can be used to help support your body’s repair and healing. This all-natural supplement contains the eight essential amino acids in optimized proportions to deliver the highest possible percentage of nutritional benefits to facilitate healing, repair, and growth.*

4. Maintain Your Normal Schedule

Seasoned athletes are used to a busy schedule of training and competitions. When forced into down-time due to an injury, it is very easy to fall into a depressed state. Prevent this by maintaining a schedule during the healing process. If you are part of a team sport, continue to attend games. Invest the same energy in your recovery as you would if you were on the active roster. If you are an individual competitor, continue to get up with your alarm every day as normal and tackle those tasks around the home that you’ve been putting off—assuming you are physically able. View your recovery as nothing more than another conquerable obstacle.

5. Set a Goal

Setting a realistic goal for an event or competition will help keep you focused and positive during your recovery. Make sure to set this goal within the expectations of your physician and trainer to make sure you aren’t setting yourself up for disappointment— or pushing yourself too soon. You can still train other non-physical factors that contribute to high performance, including discipline, focus, visualization, and studying the fundamentals of your athletic pursuit of choice.