I have a new article on Return of Kings, in which I discuss injuries that can happen to your core, and how to slowly recuperate your strength and flexibility. This the first time I have done an article at the request of one of my fans, and will hopefully be the first of many (it’s an objective metric to the growth of my readership and thus my website, you see).

A couple of weeks ago, I was perusing the comments section of an article, when a reader made a request of me. He stated that he had suffered a severe injury to his back: two ruptured lumbar discs which are well on their way towards healing. However, the real bane of his experience was the soft-tissue damage—muscle spasms and a massive loss of strength and flexibility in his core, back, glutes, and hamstrings.

He then asked me, your fitness trainer, for some advice on how to recover from this. Being that I have only recently recovered from an injury myself (albeit to my foot rather than my core), and I emphasize core training as second only to training the forearms and hands,  I feel that I might be able to give some insight on how to gradually regain your strength and mobility…

…This goes without saying, but you shouldn’t train the injured area until you have explicit medical permission from a doctor. I understand that muscular and joint atrophy are a very depressing phenomenon, and you want to get back into the fray and build up your strength as soon as possible, but it would behoove you to be safe—you don’t want to reinjure yourself, do you?

Once you’ve obtained medical permission, gradually begin increasing the difficulty and length of your workouts. The exercises given in this article should be done with the same “rules” that you would do with any other exercise: resistance training and heavy stretching should be done on separate days, and calisthenics and weights should also be done on separate days.

Read it here