I am infinitely grateful for such incredible sponsors who allow me to review/promote fitness products that I feel so passionately about so I may share them with you to help you along your fitness journey.
The following post is sponsored by FitFluential LLC on behalf of PowerPlay US.
#PowerPlayUs #FixWhatHurts
“I hurt my ______ the other day. What should I do about it?”
As a physical therapist this is a question that I get A LOT. Even more since becoming a physical therapist/blogger! What you do in the first 48-72 hours after an injury can actually have a dramatic impact on the course of your healing! As swelling and inflammation settle in it’s important that you manage these responses appropriately to decrease pain, maximize haling, and ultimately get you back to your activity faster. Today I’m talking about 4 steps you need to take immediately after an injury and sharing one product that has revolutionized rehab (PowerPlay). Keep reading to feel better faster and get back to health sooner…
There’s an acronym that we use in the rehab world that outlines the steps to take to decrease pain and inflammation in an area…
Rest: Oh if I could but teach this one important principle – one of the most important things you can do after you’ve an injured an area is REST IT!!! I can’t tell you how many times people come in to me and say something like “I thought I could play through it,” “I thought I could run it off,” or “I thought it would get better if I just kept going.” There’s a reason why major league pitchers take 4 days between starts. There’s a reason why most football games are only played once/week. There’s a reason why it’s recommended not aggressively exercise the same body area two days in a row. The bottom line is your body needs time to heal and recover. If you have an injury there’s no shame in taking a couple of days off while your body addresses these areas. Remember, in the long run it’s only a couple of days.
Ice: Cryotherapy (there’s a new, big, smart word for you!) is vital to decreasing swelling, pain, and the inflammatory response. Cold does a number of things – it causes vasoconstriction (your blood vessels and capillaries constrict to get smaller) thereby reducing swelling in an area. With this vasoconstriction you also limit the amount of inflammatory agents (neutrophils, macrophages, histamine, etc) to an area which ultimately results in a more-appropriate healing response. Finally, cold decreases nerve conduction velocity – the pain signal doesn’t get up to your brain as strongly and you perceive less pain. For effective cryotherapy you can use anything from ice cubes and frozen peas to gel packs and cooler/sleeve combos. My personal go-to is the PowerPlay cold/compression system. Keep reading to learn more about it!
Compression: Compression is a vital yet often-overlooked piece of the equation when talking about injury rehab. Compression decreases the volume of fluid that can get into an area and is therefore the best thing you can do to limit swelling. It also serves to support an injured area by “bracing” it (that whole rest thing we talked about in point one above). ACE wraps and Coban are effective, but again if you’re looking for the best system available in rehab compression you have to check out the PowerPlay, or just keep reading below!
Elevation: Keeping an injury elevated will serve to keep down swelling via gravity. This is most evident in ankle, knee, and wrist injuries. These areas are often in a “gravity-dependent” position where gravity will take all the swelling and extra fluid and blow it up like a balloon. Keeping it elevated restricts the amount of fluid that will flow into an area as the fluid has a harder time going against gravity. One note – oftentimes patients think “elevating” an injury means kicking your foot up on an ottoman, the computer tower under the desk at work, or sitting in a recliner. In reality elevation is only effective if it’s above the level of your heart! This means laying on the floor with your foot on the couch, laying on your couch with your foot up on the back of the couch, or keeping your arm raised over your head like you have a question to ask in school. These positions give the fluid somewhere to go – back in to your body as opposed to pooling somewhere in the extremity you’re trying to elevate.
So what do I use in my physical therapy clinic when I need to RICE an injury? A few months ago we were introduced to the PowerPlay portable ice/compression system and were blown away by the technology! This incredibly simple yet highly effective system is the best form of ice and compression you can find. Here’s how it works…
You can purchase multiple different “sleeves” for the unit. In my clinic we have one for the ankle, shoulder, knee, and elbow as these are some of the more common injuries we see (also available are wrist and hip). They each come with a custom-fitting gel pack icepack that we keep in the freezer. You simply take the frozen insert, place it in the sleeve for a given injury, and apply the sleeve with a series of velcro straps.
The real genius behind the PowerPlay unit is the compression pack. It’s revolutionary in all that it has to offer:
- High, medium, low pressure: select how hard you want it to squeeze based on the amount of swelling you’re experiencing.
- Intermittent, sequential compression: it effectively and actively “pushes” the swelling out of an area – versus pumping up and staying statically at that pressure for a duration of time.
- 3 injuries at the same time: The unit actually has 3 different ports on it allowing you to hook up three injured areas or three different athletes/patients at the same time! No other compression unit offers this feature! Vital in our PT clinic where we often have multiple people who need the cryo/compression during their treatment.
- Light and portable: less than one pound and fits in your pocket!
- Rechargeable battery powered: batteries make it completely portable and battery life is up to 17 hours of use! That’s 51 twenty-minute sessions! We usually plug ours in on Friday so it’s ready to go for the following week on Monday.
We had another cold/compression system we used in the clinic before that was made by another company. It had to be plugged in, required constant changing of ice and water, was large (over 5 pounds), could only be used on one person at a time, and cost us over $3,000 dollars. Starting at only $349, the PowerPlay COMPLETELY BLOWS THE COMPETITION OUT OF THE WATER!
The PowerPlay is truly the most portable and most affordable cold and compression unit on the market today. It improves circulation to reduce soreness, swelling, and fatigue in joints and muscles with pain or injury (either traumatic injury like a sprain or surgery or non-traumatic like sore joints or exercise-induced muscle pain). They’ve applied cutting-edge rehab technology with portability and affordability to offer you the finest cold and compression system you can find.
Interested in more PowerPlay? Check out their website at http://powerplay.us/ and follow on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PowerPlayUS
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerPlayUS
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/PowerPlayUS/
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Questions or comments about information contained in this post? Leave a comment below or email Jared at ToneandTigthenFitness@gmail.com
Questions or comments about information contained in this post? Leave a comment below or email Jared at ToneandTigthenFitness@gmail.com
Make it happen,
Jared
By Jared Beckstrand