Resting from exercise is often difficult to get the right balance. Resting for the right amount of time can mean the injury has a chance to settle down. Rest for too short a time and there may be no other outcome apart from the injury spiraling out of control and forcing you to pull back from activity and have a bad time!
When we talk about rest, we aren’t talking about bed rest. Relative rest is the concept of resting from aggravating activity. This usually means resting from any activity levels that spikes your pain over a certain amount. For some foot and ankle conditions more aggressive rest is advised with some patient having to go into a CAM boot. This almost always means a complete rest from exercise for the period of use of the boot. This treatment plan is common with severe acute injuries such as ligament and bone injuries.
The problem with resting for too long is that you can lose fitness and conditioning. Conditioning is your bodies tolerance to activity and the associated strain that activity causes. Losing this conditioning can mean injuries often happen as a cycle where as one injury starts to improve another injury will begin. This is something that we see often in the management of Podiatric problems.
Finding the right balance of resting is one reason that you should have a health professional assess and manage your condition who can review your progress at key points and help you decide when to return to activity.
