You have been playing well. You are winning the 50-50 balls, making good decisions in play and are moving with great intensity around the field. You are feeling good knowing that the hard work in pre season seems to be paying off.

The next ball you win out in front again. Your confidence is high and you turn sharply, your foot jars in the ground and you crumple down in pain clutching your left ankle. Cursing your luck, you hobble off the field and await medical treatment. Fearing a few weeks of a layoff, you start to think of what you might do to help support your recovery. 

Depending on the severity of the injury, there is a good chance that you will go through a period of doing limited or no training. It could even mean bed rest. A consquence of bed rest or inactivity is a loss of muscle mass. This is a threat to an athlete's ability to return to training quickly and performing again. 

If you interested in maintaining physical fitness and body composition and improving recovery, the worst thing you can do when you are injured is put your feet up for a couple of weeks and do nothing.   

Just because you have an injured ankle or knee does not mean you can't do some upper body weights sessions. If you have a damaged shoulder, you may be able to jog, do leg weights or cycle. Inactivity from injury will mean muscle wastage, not only to the injured body part but to all other muscles in the body and maintaining exercise will reduce any potential losses occuring.

Reducing your step count from 10,000 to 2,000 steps for a period of time has been shown to reduce vo2 max, max aerobic power, leg lean mass and insulin sensitivity.

So what can we eat to help us recover?

After an injury, a player is typically more downbeat and maybe a bit depressed with their current situation. They may decide to drink a few pints or throw out the nutrition plan for a couple of days. 

This is not helping their situation and the sooner they can get into a healthy eating plan the better. Eating lots of high calorie and low nutrient quality food whilst drinking lots of pints for a couple of days without exercise is a sure fire way to increase body fat and reduce muscle mass.

Here are some helpful tips to follow.

• Ensure regular protein intake. Eating 0.3 g per kg body weight every three to four hours will help maintain muscle mass. For an 80kg player this would mean eating 24g of protein 5 or 6 times a day. 
• Creatine. It appears to spare muscle mass during inactivity. 20g per day for 5 days in the beginning of immobilization appears to reduce the amount of muscle lost during immobilization. 
• Omega 3 fatty acids. 1-2g of omega 3 fatty acids in the form of oily fish or fish oils can help prevent muscle loss during periods of inactivity.  
• Reduce carbohydrate intake. Due to reduced activity levels, players will not need much high energy foods and needs will be lower than usual due to lower activity levels. Food choices should be low-med in GI and sugary foods should be limited. 
• Ensure you have no deficiencies. Vitamin D may be an issue during the Winter months so a supplement of 2000iu may be needed. 
• Limit alcohol. Alcohol will reduce muscle protein synthesis. While an odd few drinks here and there will probably not have much effect, regular binges will totally wreck your ability to grow muscle and recover properly. The extra calories in alcohol drinks will also mean more likelyhood of weight gain.

Next time you are injured, get back on track with these guidelines.