Rest After an Injury? Why Movement May Speed Recovery

October 02, 2026•7 min read

Weekly Wisdom #63

People will resist even the most obvious truth if it flies in the face of what they want to believe.

But what about when that truth contradicts everything they’ve been told by trusted experts for their whole lives—and is completely counterintuitive to their understanding of reality?

As a fitness coach, I can tell you it is very hard to swim against the stream of “common knowledge.” Even when the research and today’s leading industry experts are in agreement.

Of course, I spend hundreds of hours per year listening to experts in the field and looking at the results of current research. So while you might be hearing something for the first time by the time it comes off my lips, by the time I’m confident enough to share it with you, I have probably heard it dozens of times from multiple reputable sources.

Chances are I’ve already had experience with it myself as well.

The Advice We've All Heard: Rest

What does everyone tell you to do when you are injured?

Rest.

But complete rest may actually prolong your recovery.

It was 2001 when I was first taught that the human body heals through movement. I was dubious myself. After all, in my 30 years on the planet at that time, no one had ever told me that before. The most logical injury protocol seemed to be to rest the injured area.

But the message was given to me by the first medical professional to have success repairing my judo-broken body after several years and thousands of dollars of failed treatments from every guru I could find.

No, I wasn’t confident in his assertion. But because he’d proven himself competent beyond others in his field, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

And I was astounded to discover he was correct.

I Didn't Believe It Overnight

I didn’t adopt his “just keep moving” mantra whole cloth right out of the gate.

I tested it timidly over the next quarter-century, with gradually increasing confidence. And again and again, I found that the injuries I treated with rest lingered longer than the ones I dealt with through appropriate movement.

By my late 40s and early 50s, my ability to bounce back from injury began to feel like a superpower.

Injuries that used to take months to heal were healing in weeks. My dependence on rehabilitation specialists became a thing of the past.

In my 30s, I had to budget at least one rehab visit per month minimum. Since 2020, I have had exactly one visit to a physiotherapist. That was for a very debilitating shoulder issue.

One visit and half a dozen days of follow-up activity in the gym were all I required to resolve the issue.

It sounds like magic unless you really understand the underlying physiology. And not many people do. Not even those in the field. Newly minted physiotherapists are up on the current literature and seem to favour an immediate return to action, but there are still many older clinicians in practice who seem to have missed the current state of the research and are still operating on an outdated paradigm to their patients’ detriment.

This recent study, for example, found that one week of rest post-injury prolonged the recovery window by three weeks.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc1708134

Stop and think about that.

THREE WEEKS

Yes, following the typical advice to rest an injured body part resulted in a 3x longer recovery period.

No, I didn’t need a study to tell me this. I’ve experienced it myself time and again. And as an active person, it is one of the most empowering revelations I have encountered.

It frees me from the fear of injury because, if you are going to play rough, shit will happen.

Maybe your best friend and your spouse will do a tag-team number on your big toe. Maybe you will throw yourself on your own shoulder in solo practice. Life plays rough.

That's why we need to build resilient bodies.

What Happened to RICE?

Like me, you were probably raised with the RICE protocol:

Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation.

Every trainer learns it. For decades, it was practically gospel.

What most people never learned is that Dr. Gabe Mirkin, who coined the RICE acronym in 1978, later changed his position.

By 2014, Mirkin was publicly writing that both complete rest and ice may delay healing rather than accelerate it.

That's a pretty important update to the owner's manual.

Inflammation isn't simply a malfunction we need to shut down. It is part of the body's healing response. Ice can certainly reduce pain temporarily, but reducing pain and accelerating tissue healing are not necessarily the same thing.

So when folks ask me why I don’t put some ice on my swollen, purple toe, that’s why.

Does It Hurt to Move an Injury?

Of course it can.

Does that mean I stop moving?

No.

Now is probably not the time for me to perform today's programmed double unders or put undue strain on damaged tissue. I modify.

A bit of light, gentle movement is what's needed to flush out the inflammatory fluids and strengthen the damaged tissue. Nothing painful, nothing that exacerbates the inflammation, but movement that stays within the realm of mild discomfort. Or, as the physiotherapists who founded the Barbell Rehab Method recommend, a discomfort level of about 3 out of 10 is what you should aim for throughout your recovery period.

That's where good coaching matters.

The goal is not pain for pain's sake. Nothing that produces sharp or escalating pain. Nothing that obviously aggravates the injury. The goal is gentle, tolerable movement and progressive loading.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as we age.

For adults over 40, maintaining strength, mobility and confidence in our bodies is central to healthy aging. We don't want every ache, strain or setback to become the beginning of a long period of inactivity.

We want to remain capable.

Discomfort Isn't Always the Enemy

I know that we are all wired to avoid discomfort.

But isn't that what exercise is?

Artificially induced discomfort to elicit positive physiological adaptations.

We lift weights so our muscles and bones adapt.

We challenge our cardiovascular system so it becomes more capable.

We practice difficult movements so our balance, coordination and confidence improve.

Why should rehabilitation be completely different?

The objective isn't to prove how tough you are. It is to give your body an appropriate stimulus so it has something to adapt to.

That is part of building resilience—and resilience is a huge part of health span.

Being Active Doesn't Mean Getting Injured More Often

Here's another persistent fear: if you exercise, you're going to get hurt.

Interestingly, a large U.S. study comparing adults with different physical activity levels found no significant difference in the overall incidence of injury between active and inactive adults.

Active people did experience more sport and recreational injuries.

Inactive people experienced more injuries doing non-sport and non-recreational activities.

In other words, active people might get hurt running, jumping or lifting. Sedentary people get hurt doing other things, such as opening the fridge, gardening, getting up off the couch.

So don't let fear of injury stop you from living your life.

Get outside and play.

Lift something heavy.

Run.

Jump.

Train.

Build the strength, mobility and confidence that allow you to keep doing those things as you age.

And when you fall down and go boom, get up, brush yourself off—and get (tenderly) back on that horse.