In this episode we chat how it sucks to get injured and how it stopped many athletes and professionals careers so Christine shares her advice on how to rehabilitate & how to push through so you minimise a loss in momentum.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
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A Thinkroom production.
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In this episode we chat how it sucks to get injured and how it stopped many athletes and professionals careers so Christine shares her advice on how to rehabilitate & how to push through so you minimise a loss in momentum.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
Ash Horton:
Our host, the world renowned Christine Envall, an IFBB professional, three times world champion, a mentor, an icon, and of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein.
Ash Horton:
In this episode, we chat about how it sucks to get injured and how it stopped so many athletes in their professional careers. Christine shares her advice on how to rehabilitate and how to push through, so you minimise your loss of momentum.
Ash Horton:
Okay, Christine, let's talk about injuries and what it can do to someone's career and how it can sort of really derail them. I know in my time, if I got a shoulder injury, because I used to do a little bit of MMA, or Brazilian jiu jitsu and you know, if I did a shoulder, I'd be really, I guess, aware of it and wouldn't want to damage it even further. So I'd almost stopped training and that lack of momentum, especially in bodybuilding, must be absolutely essential to be able to work around it.
Ash Horton:
So you must've been injured in your career several times, which you had a loss of momentum and how did you handle that and how did you continue on?
Christine Envall:
Well, yes, I did have a pretty serious injury. When I come back to compete in, I think it was 2012, I had had a bit of a layoff from professional competition, and I got back into my training, and I was literally four weeks out from my comeback show and I'd had it now and again, it's different than an injury and a niggle, I guess, and I will talk about the niggles, but I had had a pain in my elbow for probably about six months, but you keep on training, but eventually it just tore off like the whole bone came away on my elbow and my right arm and my tricep detached.
Christine Envall:
So that was pretty devastating four weeks out from my competition. The thing that I kept in mind was it was fixable. I mean, I didn't know that, of course when I did it, but in my mind it was fixable and I would just keep going and I would be back on stage. And I think that-
Ash Horton:
You sort of just glazed over that. Your tricep... Your tricep detached?
Christine Envall:
Yes.
Ash Horton:
It must have been excruciating.
Christine Envall:
Kind of, yes and no. Like when it first happened, it was actually relief, believe it or not because it had to give me so much pain and, and you get to properly... You're thinking, why on earth were you still chaining? But it had given me so much chronic pain that when it actually let go, it was a feeling of relief, before the pain hit.
Ash Horton:
You are superhuman, aren't you?
Christine Envall:
No, it was a Saturday afternoon and I had a little bit of a flu, so I probably shouldn't have been training either. But again, this is the kind of stuff that you do when you have a very important show, you push yourself. And I remember we stopped off at the, like there was a NightOwl or one of those convenience stores and grabbed a bag of frozen peas to stick on my elbow and rushed down to the emergency, down at, I think it's Pindara, the one down there, but they could only do x-rays at the time, I had to wait to do all the ultrasounds and whatnot, but I kind of wasn't even convinced that it was necessarily like torn, until I realised that I couldn't move, I couldn't connect.
Christine Envall:
But yeah, it was actually... I have torn a hamstring before and believe me, the hamstring was like a thousand times more painful than what this one particularly was, but we'll talk about the hamstring later, but that, but yeah, it came off, obviously, just had to be totally like basically pulled back down and pinned in.
Christine Envall:
It was a clean injury because it didn't tear the muscle as much as the bone actually gave way, with the tendons still attached to it. And that was just like a... what do you call them, a bone spur, that had just pulled.
Christine Envall:
And that was literally just like years and years of weight training, where it had kind of like almost stretched my bone. And if people can relate to that, like it just…
Ash Horton:
I think everyone's getting a really good visual [crosstalk 00:03:57].
Christine Envall:
A good visual of that?
Ash Horton:
Yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, so-
Ash Horton:
I definitely relate to not sort of realising you've done that much damage until you actually do something with it. Right? Like [crosstalk 00:04:06]
Christine Envall:
You don't realise how much you use your tricep for even like writing, the twisting your hand around as you've got to use a pen to write, and you just can't move. Or I use my hand, like to push something away and you don't have that. Think of any tricep movement that you do, like a tricep push down or a kick back. You don't have that movement. Like nothing's connected.
Christine Envall:
Your brain saying "Push that away." And your arms are sitting there and you're puzzled as to why it's not doing anything because literally it's not attached the strings aren't attached. Like basically that's it. But you know, it essentially what it was, it was, getting the surgeon and kind of saying, okay, what's the situation?
Christine Envall:
And you know, obviously in that situation it was great news. It was like, "Yep, we can fix this, and you will be good to go, but you can't train for four months." And following all the processes that they tell you, so you have a timeframe. So in my head I'm like "Cool. Longer than what I had hoped, but it wasn't like he's saying, you know, you're never going to train again or anything like that.”
Christine Envall:
It's just pretty much, "I got to follow this process. I have a great success rate and you know, you'll be good." So I think the main thing was listening to what the doctors and the surgeons were saying and doing the proper rehab, because that was another kind of point where I had to go and see a specialist like elbow... And I think I did shoulders and elbows for rehab and they would tell me, "Do 20 reps a day.”
Christine Envall:
So 20 reps at a time, but 10 times a day, take your splint off and try to do a bicep curl. And if anyone who has had tricep surgery, literally your arm is stuck straight. You can't bend your arm once the surgery comes out, because it's all so tight. And if you bend it too much, the chance is you're going to rip the pins that have been put in.
Christine Envall:
So he's literally sitting there doing a curl that moves like a millimetre and you're doing that like, "Okay, there's my 20 reps and I feel like I'm doing nothing," but as you go through the rehab, they kind of encourage you to get, "Okay, now you need to get to like a 10 degree bend, now you need to get to a 20 degree bend.”
Christine Envall:
They kind of give you a target of where you were trying to get to. Even if you have to force it with your hands and be like, "Okay, slowly, slowly, we're forcing you to get that movement back." Because I think number one, getting the movement back is critical, and it kind of hit home to me when I was, I don't know, maybe four or five weeks into the rehab because they don't let you start that for a couple of weeks.
Christine Envall:
And there was a young kid who had injured himself playing rugby. And he was about, I don't know, 12 weeks into his rehab, and he didn't have his movement back and turns out, he hadn't been doing this physio. He hadn't been listening. He was just like "Ah, yeah, whatever," kind of took for granted, I guess, that it would just come back. And I think it was at that point there that I realised that, "Shoot, there is actually a chance that this thing won't return to normal, if you don't do what you're told.”
Christine Envall:
So one of the things is really just being mindful of that. And then the other thing is there was a couple of friends of mine that I'd known through bodybuilding who'd had Achilles injuries and I know that they'd been told, you know, "Don't go in the gym,' this, that, and the other.
Christine Envall:
And I know that two weeks later they were back trying to squat and boom, what do you know, it had pulled off, you know, so there's that temptation to try to go and "Oh yeah, it feels all right, I can move it a little bit. I'm sure I can take it.”
Christine Envall:
But understanding, you know, the doctor explained to me the time frame in terms of what happens when and how, where you've actually got, you know, as pin screwed into the bone. So you need to let the bone start to meet. And that happens at this month to this month. And then you need to let it have, like, re-calcify, which happens at this time and this time.
Christine Envall:
So he said to me like, "If you were not doing sport," then obviously at three months, they normally get people to go back and start doing certain things he said, "But if you want success and you want to be able to put the stress through this thing, that you have been putting through it, then you need to have that extra month.”
Christine Envall:
And he said it's like an injury that mostly it's football players who get. And he said he had not one person who'd had a failure because they'd gone to that four month mark. So that's not that I didn't train for four months. That's just I didn't use my elbow for four months. So what I did was basically kept my same routine.
Christine Envall:
So, you know, obviously you have a training system where you do legs on one day and chest on another, delts, you know, whatever you're doing, I literally kept that.
Christine Envall:
I was mindful that, you know, people talk about not wanting to get an imbalance in your body, but I realised that's going to be caught up very quickly once you get back to training. So I figured I'll keep the other side moving. But what I did find out is that when you're only doing one side of a lateral raise, you actually rely on the balance of the other side to allow you to do the weight that you can do.
Christine Envall:
So I found that even if I had wanted to, and because I couldn't like... Because people do one arm lateral raises, no problem, but they're hanging on to like a bar or something, to support themselves. You can't do that when your arm is not strong enough to do that. So you're literally trying to stand there, do a lateral raise. So you are limiting the weight that you can do, but I kept doing it, but I would do like a hundred reps.
Ash Horton:
Okay. So, your main thing was just to keep turning up every day, just, I guess, isolating that area and not use it whatsoever and then doing everything else around it.
Christine Envall:
Just keeping the routine because I think... And that's probably really relevant to COVID as well. It's not just relevant to injury, but the people who've come through COVID, and got back into the groove a lot better are the people who've maintained some kind of routine as to their exercise program.
Christine Envall:
And I've talked to a lot of different people, who've done it different and some people who've just gone, "Ugh, didn't like that, you know, it was boring doing it at home, I didn't like it." And they're sort of struggling to get back into the groove again, because you do get out of habit and you know, three months is a long time and three, four, I can kind of relate the injury recovery time somewhat to the COVID layoff time, in terms of when the gyms are being closed. So it's very easy for those habits to slip out.
Christine Envall:
So there were two things I was really mindful of. One was I didn't want my, my body fat and my body weight to go too out of control because obviously when you're not doing the activity that you were doing, so we recognise that weights does actually burn a lot of calories. So my metabolic requirements would have gone right down.
Christine Envall:
I was coming off a comp diet, so I was very lean at the time. So I didn't want that to all just totally blow out. So I actually had to be very mindful and I kept myself on a diet. So I actually was eating less than what I was eating on the diet for the comp, because of my metabolic requirements were down. And that was really important too, because I had met someone who'd had a pretty bad injury and when I met them, they were very overweight and they said, "Look, I was actually a very fit person, but what I did was I pretty much let everything go.”
Christine Envall:
So just from seeing people around me who had done that, that wasn't going to be what I was going to do. I was really going to make a conscious effort to keep on, also, on my eating routine and really keep my body weight under control because I didn't want two things to happen. And that would be, one, trying to bring my body back under control and try to get my training back on track.
Christine Envall:
So it takes conscious effort, and discipline, but you have to do that. You have to treat it like a process. One is, you know, you have your rehab that you're doing. And number two, you've got your nutrition, and number three, you've got your routine. So literally, yeah, I would do whatever I could and if it meant doing a hundred reps, because that's what it took to fatigue on my little three kilo dumbbell that I was doing on my lateral raise, or bicep curl, or whatever. Because there's so much that you can do, single arm and with machines, you can press just one side.
Christine Envall:
So it really was just to keep the blood flowing and just to keep that timeframe that I would be spending at the gym, so that I wasn't kind of slotting something else in there, because it can very easily happen that you find that you might enjoy doing that thing more and you just kind of like enjoy sitting on the couch, watching the soapies or whatever it is that you might do.
Christine Envall:
So getting into the gym and then just seeing people around you and talking to them and hey, it's always fun talking about an injury, my goodness. When you've injured yourself, for like two years afterwards, I think that's all that comes up in conversation.
Ash Horton:
And then it becomes an excuse.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. But if you're at the gym talking about it, that's okay.
Ash Horton:
That's right, yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. So that was the main thing was that I had a plan that I would keep in that system and keep doing what I could do. I knew that once I got back into things, that any disparity in size would come back now, the one thing I wasn't ready for was exactly how much you shrink, and how quickly, like I thought it would be like a gradual progression where my arm would get smaller and smaller from not being used.
Christine Envall:
I literally came out of surgery, they unbandaged it, and I went, "Where is my arm?" Like I had no idea that would be the case. It was like this little twig and I'm like, "Holy moly." Like it literally vanished on the operating table. So I wasn't ready for that. But the really good news was, and this is a fascinating thing about muscle growth to me was that, as soon as I was able to... So at month one, I was allowed to take the fibreglass cast thing off that kept it straight and I think by that month, when I pretty much had 90 degree movement back again, and I was allowed to get around without the cast and just things like brushing your teeth and lifting up a cup of coffee, actually grew muscle.
Ash Horton:
Wow.
Christine Envall:
Think about that. A cup of coffee would weigh what two, 300 grams, not even a kilo and just doing like that, but just giving your body movement. I could see the muscles starting to come back. So I think that gave me a lot of confidence that by the four month mark, as soon as I got back into it, it would be fine.
Christine Envall:
I think when getting back into the gym, it then becomes the fear of hurting it again, like you do hold back a little bit from pushing. So you need to spend like maybe the next one to two months, I guess, gaining that confidence and just doing movements but not over-stressing it, because mentally, you know, just have that vision of what if it just comes flying off again, [crosstalk 00:13:20]
Ash Horton:
And on the flip side, having the discipline to actually grow into it as well, instead of getting too excited and lifting too much, too soon.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, because your body will tell you, because I think, you know, partway along there where I was allowed to take my little thing off, I got a bit excited and I thought "I can just like do one kilo on this side and do some lateral raises with it," it swelled up like, I don't know what.
Christine Envall:
Back to the doctor he's checked it for an infection. And he goes, "Have you happened to have been using this?”
Christine Envall:
I was honest. And I said, “Yes."
Christine Envall:
He goes, "Don't. Just don't." I tested it, just did a little bit of a test, no heavy weight, just that one kilo and the stress of pressure on it from doing a lateral raise with one kilo was enough to really blow it up.
Christine Envall:
So learnt a lot from that and really sort of said, "Okay, I'm going to settle back down. I'm just going to wait." And then when it comes back in, but as soon as they said four month mark, you'd be good to go. Everything's healed enough and strong enough that you can do stuff, then trust that as well, but ease back into it. So you're not kind of doing anything too sudden and really learning what to do and not to do.
Christine Envall:
I think we also changed my training system at that point as well. I was obviously older, you know, I was 39, around 39, nearly 40 at the time. And I realised I couldn't train like a 25 year old. So I was still... When I did the injury training, like every muscle group, twice a week, you know, training six days a week, every muscle group, twice a week. So we actually went back to, I ended up doing legs only once a week.
Christine Envall:
And then I started, then I took every body part just once a week and just changed my whole training program. So it was giving me more time to recover. So I think that's one of the things that with injury, what I know is that sometimes people come back better from an injury because your training system might be that you're just going heavy, for example, and that's not necessarily the best way to train.
Christine Envall:
So sometimes when you come out of that, you get more creative about what you can and can't do. And you focus more on like the mind-muscle connection, you focus more on drop sets and things where you'll find with every injury, that there'll be that point where sometimes it's the absolute weight, and sometimes it's like the number of reps that really kind of aggravates it.
Christine Envall:
So as far as, you know, I was never... I don't even bench press anymore because that was what did it. And I really feel the pressure on the points. Like, whereas dumbbells give you that little bit more flexibility, but I'm not going to go... Like, there's a point where over that weight, you really feel it's not productive on your joints and it can cause a problem. So you find more creative ways of getting the work into your muscles.
Christine Envall:
So I think that some positive things that come out of an injury is that you get more creative with your training, and you think about it more and you don't just rely purely on heavy weight to do what you want to do. But you know, the key thing there in keeping that momentum is look past the injury, like look past where you are now and look to when you're back.
Christine Envall:
So if they're saying four months, then my focus was on four months' time, like, now is like getting through and then it was on that, but it was also on the comp that I wanted to do, like that same comp but a year later. So obviously I missed the one in 2012, when I went back in 2013 and I did that competition. So within 12 months I was back.
Ash Horton:
So you always had a goal that you're aiming for.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, yeah, like I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to be able to do that. So that really kept me going, like I didn’t.
Ash Horton:
How'd you go in that comp?
Christine Envall:
It was, well, I didn't actually go that well, because it was my debut back after 10 years. And if you looked at the photos, I felt I did really well, but politically I came like, I don't know, 12th or 13th, or something like that. The next show I did, like months later, I jumped up to like 7th. So that told me it was just like, "Okay, who the hell are you? Where have you been?" And they didn't know where to put me.
Christine Envall:
And then the fact that I went up so dramatically to the next show told me that they're like, "Okay, yeah, tick, you're okay." And then that year I pretty much sat around that 6th, 7th, and then the next year I got 3rds and qualified for the Olympia.
Christine Envall:
So again, that's a whole other process that we might've talked about where, you know, you need to understand that it's not necessarily about how good you are. There's a process that you have to go through, as a professional, to really get accepted and recognised. And then you know which direction you're moving at the shows, rather than the absolute placing.
Christine Envall:
If I had stayed in that 14th place kind of thing at every show I had done that year, I would have gone "Ah, they probably really don't like me," but the fact that I'd moved up, I knew that if I just kept presenting what I was presenting, that I would do okay, which I did.
Christine Envall:
So yeah, but it was, you know, that was after about a 10-year break off the professional stage. So it was definitely interesting.
Ash Horton:
You needed to earn your stripes again, eh?
Christine Envall:
Yes, you do. Absolutely do.
Ash Horton:
So, you talked about your hammy as well? What'd you do?
Christine Envall:
Well, I wasn't competing at the time. I was retired and I put a motorbike down on my hamstring and basically ripped it right at the-
Ash Horton:
Off-road, on-road?
Christine Envall:
It was just test-riding a bike. So obviously it was an unfamiliar bike and it jumped... Like I hit the handbrake and it really dove to one side, which I was, none of my bikes did that. And it was tall, like it was a tall bike because normally when I get a bike, I have to get it adjusted and get the springs and everything. So when I was test driving, we weren't really thinking about that, and yeah, it's unfortunate that my legs weren't long enough to support and it jumped a hell of a lot more than what I was expecting.
Christine Envall:
So it took me down with a big pop, but the stupid thing was, because I wasn't competing. I really wasn't that worried. That hurt like hell, like that was like pass out kind of pain. That was how painful that was. Black from top to bottom. You know, swelled up, I could barely get my pants off. And, but all I did there was because it was a rip rather than a... well, it was probably multiple rips because it was kind of a mess, but like as soon as I could kind of move, I would start walking.
Christine Envall:
And then I got into the gym, I obviously couldn't train legs and a rip is different. So it was only like a six week timeframe. So I would just ride the bike just to keep the blood going into that muscle. And just to keep again, basically to flush out, I guess, all of the old dead blood cells from the bruise and then just went back into my normal legs training.
Christine Envall:
So it didn't have a long-term impact in terms of... You know, I had probably little bit of an imbalance when I squatted, I noticed that that would be a little tighter on that side, but I didn't have anything kind of attended to, medically. I didn't even get scans or anything. Because I was like, "Ah, I'm not competing. I don't really care.”
Christine Envall:
But what I did find was when I did come back to compete, I had to get a hell of a lot of scar tissue massaged and a lot of physio, because I actually couldn't flex my quad properly to the front because there was that much tightness in the hamstring at the back. So my piece of advice would be that, you know... well, I guess it shows how I approached it differently when I wasn't competing to when I was, because obviously when I was competing and any injury that I have ever done, whilst actively competing, I straightaway go get scans done, get it assessed, if need be go to a specialist and get their opinion on it, and figure out a course of action.
Christine Envall:
With this, it was just like, "Oh yeah, whatever, I can still train. It's only a rip," even though it's like a massive bruising. It didn't really phase me at all, but, you know, just got back into my training as quickly as possible. But you know, the price that I paid for that was a hell of a lot of ultrasound, and deep tissue massage and stuff to really break up those knots. And, you know, now I can flex it, no problem.
Christine Envall:
But you know, when I first went back to go to compete and started to try to hit my mandatory poses and realise I couldn't flex my legs, it was just so, so tight. So that moral of that story is I always forget, it would have been much better if I had had the massage done while the scar tissue was still fresh. It probably wouldn't even have built up at all.
Christine Envall:
But you know, that's that thing where I don't... I guess I only took things seriously when I was competing. Because then I had another injury, which has actually what retired me, was when my rotator cuff tore, six, no, this one was-
Ash Horton:
Which is pretty common.
Christine Envall:
It is very common. And again, this is the thing with weights and pushing yourself, there's that fine line between feeling like... Or being smarter and kind of saying, "Is there another way to tackle this?" Versus pushing on and kind of doing the same thing? So, because I had had an injury before, when it happened like just a little bit of a tear, but then like followed up with probably like a really big tear, about three weeks later because I didn't stop enough of what I was doing, because I could still do stuff.
Christine Envall:
So unfortunately I'm one of those people who believe if I can-
Ash Horton:
Yeah, I'm the same.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, you kind of still push it. So I felt that I needed to keep the density, but I wasn't so worried because I was like, "Oh yeah, not a problem. I'll just get it fixed up." Like what my tricep was, I can still do everything except straight overhead. I could do incline pressing.
Christine Envall:
I just, yeah, I just couldn't do directly over my head. And so there's a couple of things I couldn't do, and I managed to get through to stage. Then I didn't worry about getting it looked at until after, because as I said it wasn't like, I was totally... Like the tricep, I literally couldn't do... I couldn't even flex my bicep when I went to translate because it's the antagonist to the bicep. And I guess you forget that how your body is set up in that way, that everything has an agonist and an antagonist.
Christine Envall:
And you know, you need your tricep to be stable, to be able to even create a bicep and flex your biceps. So I couldn't even pose if I wanted to. Whereas this tear was obviously not complete. I could still, you know, do 90% of things, but then I tore my bicep and sprained my wrists just after the competition. So my whole left side had, fairly major injuries. Comp was over, so I did go and get all my scans and everything. And in here, there was a tear and there was... That's when I said, "Oh look, it's just a bicep tear, but nothing that needs to be surgically fixed, because your tendon's still intact, just a sprain, whatever.”
Christine Envall:
Go off to the surgeon happens to be the same surgeon who did my tricep. So yeah, because he's shoulders and elbows. And he said, "No, no surgery for this one." Because he said, "Basically your tendons in such a state of, now after so many years of training that they have thin points in a lot of places." So he said, "If I fixed this one here, you're just going to put the pressure on somewhere else and you're going to then rip that part.”
Christine Envall:
So he said, "Is it causing you pain?" And I said, "Well, not really." He goes, "Well then until it's causing you pain and you can't actually move," he goes, "Don't even think about surgery, because it's like a year process, as opposed to four months.”
Christine Envall:
So tricep, four months, shoulder was a year. But that's that specific one because I know other people who had shoulder injuries and they say it's, you know, theirs was only three months. So it really depends on what every single injury is. So, I think that the moral of that is you got to go get it assessed.
Ash Horton:
And you were talking niggles before, versus injuries so is that [crosstalk 00:23:43].
Christine Envall:
Well niggles are normally the indicator that something's wrong. And that's why like with my tricep, for example, the niggle that had been there, it was like a chronic, very, very sharp pain that came in on tricep push downs, came in on bench presses. It came in on so many different things, but I didn't... like I had kind of had it looked at and it was something that I had... like "Okay, once the comp's over, I'll get this looked at," because it wasn't... You know, it was painful, but it wasn't the end of the world.
Christine Envall:
And I think, you know, that thing where... Like, you can think in hindsight, maybe we should have rested it or something, but at the same time, I'm thinking "It was going to happen anyway," because I wasn't going to not keep putting, probably too much pressure. Like any kind of weights would have been too much pressure, because of the fact that it was the bone thing out.
Christine Envall:
So I think it was more just an indicator. Whereas sometimes you have an injury, you just have like a week off, or what they say, you try to break the inflammatory cycle. And a lot of the time, you know, obviously what the pain is, is an inflammation.
Christine Envall:
So sometimes what I've been recommended by sports doctors and that is take like a hit of your Voltaren or something like that. And that just kind of stops the inflammation cycle enough, and rest for two weeks or something and then it goes away and it pretty much doesn't come back.
Christine Envall:
So it really depends on what every single thing is. Whereas I've had other niggles where I have gone to the sports doctor and it was, again, it was an elbow problem and it turns out there was like calcification of some of the tendons and a couple of other things. And they did a treatment on it. And I can't think of the name of the actual term was, basically like a pneumatic hammer and ultrasound.
Christine Envall:
And they basically getting to break up the calcification. And I had about four treatments of that and was good as gold. So I think that really the thing is to go and find out what the problem.
Ash Horton:
You called them a sports doctor, before. What kind of sports doctor?
Christine Envall:
Just a general, a practitioner who specialises in sports. So you obviously got like a general practitioner who sees everyone from, you know, gosh, the cold through to everything. So I always used to go to the... I can't remember the name of the place, was up in Brisbane. They had one at the Gabba. They have a facility at the Gabba where they have a lot of the treatments, and then they have the one in... Some of whom are like right in the centre of Brisbane.
Christine Envall:
And I think it's just called like Queensland Sports Medicine or something like that. And they specialise in seeing athletes. So as opposed to a normal doctor who generally, like check-ins, you got a normal doctor, they sign you straight away to a specialist, or they tell you "Just don't train for like, until it comes good again," which is not useful for an athlete.
Christine Envall:
Like they have normally a program or a plan, like they will say... Like, they understand that you need to compete. You need to get on stage. So they will have a workaround. So whether it be "Okay, we can do cortisone, even though long-term cortisone isn't good. But that will get you through to where you need to be. Then you can come back. Get your event out the way, come back. Now, we'll have this treatment plan.”
Ash Horton:
So when you go to a specialist's sports practice, before you'd go to the physio?
Christine Envall:
Yes.
Ash Horton:
Because the sport's practice might recommend you to a physio, but they're more well-rounded. Whereas a lot of people, they'd just go straight to the physio.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. Well, I think the thing is, like, if you know you've just like tweaked your neck, like you've got a little bit of a... That feels like a bit of a strain, or something like that. It kind of depends, I guess, if you can identify exactly when it happened and what it was, like if you wake up one morning with a stiff neck, then you're probably just going to go to the physio, because it could just be it needs a little bit of massage, a little bit of heat treatment and stuff, or where I have had…
Christine Envall:
Well, like with my hamstring, where I knew that the tightness was just really due to scar tissue, I couldn't do a specific thing. So, you know, I knew I didn't want to have to have surgery and have it re-broken back and attached and that.
Christine Envall:
So I knew I just needed to have that done, so some of it is just experience, knowing, but generally, the sports doctor will send you to the right spots, because obviously he didn't do the treatment, the pneumatic ultrasound treatment, he sent me off to the Gabba where they have the room, then a specialist person did that particular treatment there, or he might recommend you go to a chiropractor.
Christine Envall:
So they can still recommend you to different people, but like say, yeah, they can also... Because they're doctors, they can prescribe specific medicine, if you need it, they might recommend that you go and have the PRP, the blood-spinning and try that kind of thing. So they actually have a really, really good view of all the different things and they would even kind of say to me like, "Okay, what is your goal? Okay, we try this now. Then we do that. And then we do that.”
Christine Envall:
So they'll have like an actual sequence of what to do, like where I had my shoulder done. And although I went back to them, when I did another, an extensive tear, they now have it as... They were just surgeons, but now they have a sports doctor on hand as well.
Christine Envall:
And again, he looks like someone who does a lot of sport, so I think he also kind of understands. And so he understands one, the psychology that to tell a person who does sport, just rest for a month and with no plan, no program that's, kind of a devastating thing. Like, you always need to have a plan of action. And because what, you know, you say, "Well, what happens in a month when it hasn't come good? What do I do?”
Christine Envall:
Whereas you, you know, if you're actively working on something and fixing something. So yeah, I always recommend, if you just go to your GP, ask to be referred, if you need a referral, otherwise look for specific sports medicine place, and see if they will take you if you're an athlete, because they will have a way, way, way, broader array of things that they can give you access to. And they will also understand what you need to do at that particular point in time.
Ash Horton:
Look, that's really, really good advice. Let's just wrap this up. And what would be your advice for someone, if we were to summarise it, someone that's just got an injury, they're out for four weeks, what's your ultimate advice?
Christine Envall:
Firstly, have they had themselves checked? Like, do they know what the actual cause is? Is it sprained? Is it ripped?
Ash Horton:
The question was too broad, wasn't it?
Christine Envall:
It was way too broad!
Ash Horton:
I don't know, pick one, pick one. You create the scenario, you're the expert!
Christine Envall:
Well, let's assume that you have had all these scans done and it's just a sprain and you're being told not to move that particular thing you might have been put in a brace, okay. And they've said, "Don't do anything that is not able to be done in that brace." I would then do everything else that I possibly could.
Christine Envall:
So I would just keep my routine and you know, if it means that I can use half of my body, still train my legs, I would do exactly that. I would still be in the gym. I would still be just, yeah, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be not doing activity.
Christine Envall:
So if it meant that I couldn't do, you know, a HIIT cardio session then I'd get on and ride the bike or whatever you can do that doesn't require that arm, so yeah, that's what I'd be doing.
Ash Horton:
Really valuable stuff. Thank you very much, Christine, for anybody's got any questions, jump on Aussie Muscle Guru, Facebook page, and fire away. We might answer them. [inaudible 00:30:37].
Christine Envall:
Thank you everyone.
Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like, what you heard recognise that these tips are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that Buy Now button.
Ash Horton:
So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle Guru, three times, world champion, Christine Envall.