If you’re anything like me not being able to lift sucks, not only do you lose what you look forward to in your day but you also worry about all the progress you’re missing out on. Don’t worry though! You have plenty of options for what you can do in and outside of the gym.
Here’s a List of Everything you can do when you’re Injured
- Mobility Routine
- Light Cardio
- Meal Prep
- Research Fitness
- Read a book
- Focus on a different hobby
Loosen Up with A Mobility Routine
Mobility is a very important aspect when it comes to building muscle and a quick warm-up before working out isn’t always going to cut it. Mobility directly impacts your lift because depending on your mobility, you may not be able to achieve the full range of motion of a movement.
Due to the nature of lifting weights, we constantly tense up our muscles which over time constricts the movement unless we keep them loose. Warming up will put you at a lower risk of injury because your muscles have more elasticity and they have more oxygen and blood flow when they have been slowly worked to reach full performance.
Having a go-to mobility routine is always handy even if you just have a few favourite exercises to go through but creating a routine isn’t hard to do. I highly recommend yoga for those looking for a more mind-focused exercise that will also help loosen up your body and if you still wanna incorporate a mid-level intensity exercise pilates is the way to go.
Light Cardio (Upper Body Injury)
You can never go wrong with improving your cardiovascular health, although lifting weights is greatly beneficial to our health, cardio is the way to go if long-term health is your concern.
Regardless of if you’re bulking or not cardio is a great way to keep your metabolism on track and it’ll burn off all the unnecessary calories. Remember when you went to the wrong Popeyes and ended up getting a chicken sandwich instead of your protein bar? After some time on the treadmill, it’s like it never happened. Just make sure you don’t push yourself too hard because even though you’re not directly using your upper body muscles you still want to keep the recovery process going so don’t stress your body with it.
Meal Prep
Never forget that nutrition is the most essential part of building muscle because if you’re fueling your body with junk it doesn’t have the resources it needs to create more muscle tissue. Meal prepping is easily the #1 way to stay on top of your diet because instead of putting time aside daily just to prepare your meals, you take a bit of extra time one day so you have prepped food for the whole week.
Meal prepping is actually a lot easier than it looks you just have to be good at multitasking if you want to be time efficient. When I’m doing my thing in the kitchen I’m using all burners on the stovetop, my air fryer, the oven, and the barbecue. By doing this all I need is an hour and I have 20 cooked chicken breasts and there are usually around 5 or 6 different recipes used each time.
If you don’t know how to cook you can always learn! It’s a very easy skill to pick up and between you and me, being able to cook will make her choose you over the other guy all day every day.
For more information on nutrition and meal prep to stimulate muscle growth check below!
Supplement Guide
How to Diet
Macronutrients Guide
Research Fitness
Researching fitness is going to be a great way to gain knowledge outside of the gym but you obviously already know that because you’re here. Look at you taking all that initiative!
Read a Book
I know I know, old people always talk about how great reading is and how much you can learn but I’ve always hated reading, until recently. After I decided university wasn’t meant for me I immediately acknowledged that I need a way to keep on learning even though I stopped going to school so I took a leap of faith and bought a few self-help books, all I can say is I’m glad I took that leap.
Before 2023 I hadn’t read a book since I was 9 years old and since the start of this year, I’ve read 9 books start to finish. Not that this is some substantial amount of reading but it’s really all it takes to gain a well of information that you can actually apply to the real world.
You can always look for fitness-related books but what I do is take my focus off the gym for a bit and look to build up a different skill. Recently I’ve been learning more about financial literacy because I’ve always been a business-minded person but the importance of financial literacy is huge for succeeding in the world today.
Focus On a Different Hobby
This kinda relates to the last one but focusing on another hobby might be what you need. If the gym has been your focus for months on end take some time away to focus on things outside of the weights.
Being THE gym bro is cool and all but you need to be a well-rounded person, the gym can’t be your whole personality, and the only thing you’re good at, nobody likes that guy. It will also let you mentally rest from constantly thinking about the gym and how much you’re gonna deadlift next session. Maybe you can even find a way to combine another hobby with fitness, like… I don’t know, start a blog or something.
Now You’re Not Bored To Death!
After reading this list just pick your favourite one of the options and get after it! It never hurts to find other ways to improve yourself and you should never let a physical problem take away from your learning opportunities that’s just lazy plain and simple.
