When you injure yourself, you may automatically think of ‘RICE’ which has been the go-to protocol for acute injuries for many years. Every First Aid course drummed this acronym into its participants; Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.
Then, later, a P for Protection was added to make it ‘PRICE’. However, times are changing.
It is now time to think ‘POLICE’ instead.
Rather than following PRICE/RICE you would be better to do the following:
Protect, Optimal Loading, Ice, Compression, Elevation.
What does all this mean?
It means movement. Gentle motion. Optimal exercises that allow your injury to heal as normally as possible without aggravating it further. This keeps the injured area active and decreases stiffness. It allows the fascia to heal into natural patterns rather than into rigid scar tissue. And it ultimately gives you back your normal function as fast as
possible.
This can be scary but, other than in the very early stages of an acute injury, motion is always lotion. Don’t forget you can seek professional assistance from a chiropractor/healthcare professional for optimal exercises if you are unsure of where to start. However, in most instances, you’ll need to do the following:
• Have some rest after the initial injury (depending on how serious it is).
• Then introduce passive movement (where the injured area is helped to move).
• Once you started making progress here, consider doing active movement (where the injured area moves itself).
• After that, you can consider doing strengthening exercises to start getting your body functioning normally again.
When injured, don’t pay the ‘PRICE’ with too much rest and, instead, get help from the ‘POLICE’ with gentle movement and ‘Optimal Loading’.
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