Rest. Ice. Compress. Elevate.
RICE
These are some of the most important words in medicine. There is a whole bunch of technical reasoning behind why these four actions are so helpful when recovering from an injury, but you don’t need to understand anymore than these four words.
The sooner you can implement these actions the faster you will recover and get back in action. I encourage you to see how far you can go with each of them.
In the shot above I have accomplished all four actions while recovering from knee surgery. My goal is to get movement back to an acceptable range so that I can start strengthening the leg again. Swelling plays a huge role in mobility so ice is critical.
Most ice packs suck. They just aren’t large enough to cover the entire knee and stay cold very long. I prefer a back of ice in a trash bag. It covers the whole knee and lasts a long time. All for a couple of bucks.
Get healed and get back out there.