Ask Lemmy

This might sound crazy, but if you can wear braces to protect yourself, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu might be an option.

I've trained for close to a decade, and have trained with people with spinal injuries, hand deformities, no legs, limited/no vision, and limited/no hearing. Obviously, combat sports with limb injuries without consulting a professional first is fucking stupid, but you can absolutely make it work with the right gym and coach. Sure, you won't be doing an iminari roll any time soon, but it might be a good workout and an option to test what you can and cannot do.

This really is something you should discuss with a professional physical therapist. You can do a lot of damage when doing the wrong excercises too early

Like others have said: go see therapist, do not try following random advice online. That is coming from someone having to deal with A few lifelong health issues of their own.

Also, start small and slow. This was huge, for me. And allowed me to do so much I never imagined I would be able to, on the long run.

This is when you bite the bullet and talk to a trained professional.

i was a personal trainer for a bit and honestly if you were my client id ask you to go get guidelines from a physical therapist first. swimming and light calisthenics should be fine, but listen to your body first and do not push it/make it hurt

I do think you should consult with a physical therapist. That said, I think machines are going to help you a lot.

With inured wrists you could do a lot with a cable machine and a wrist attachment. You could use a pec dec machine and your forearms to work your chest.

For legs you could try leg curls and leg extensions if you can lift far enough away from your ankle.

Like others have said. If you have injuries or body irregularities go to a medical professional. Do not trust some yahoo on the internet.

Go to physical therapy if your insurance covers it or you can afford it. They're not omniscient but they do have some training and experience treating this stuff.

You want to know things before meeting the therapist. Maybe read a few things like this:

https://www.physio-pedia.com/Rehabilitation_in_Sport

But ofc I agree with the others: listen to what your therapist recommends.

Are you able to swim? Braces necessary?

Swimming? You don’t have to swim fast to have good energy expenditure

I was at the Mayo Hospital’s own chronic pain rehabilitation clinic, and have all the PT exercises they had their patients all do if interested.

Bicycling and water jogging are both great but the former is far more accessible. Flat pedals are better if you're injured/recovering since you can adjust your foot positioning (if clipless aren't dialed in right you're kinda locked in and can exacerbate injury, and if you don't unclip in time you fall over). Padded gloves to keep vibration from aggravating things. I was in a boot for 6 months from a gnarly stress fracture but my doc cleared me for biking and I basically lived on a bike.

Also range of motion, biking helps for that since you're constantly articulating your ankles and loosening up the 'rust'. Trace the alphabet with your toes a couple times a day to stay on the up and up.

Check with doc ofc, and might help to get bloodwork so see if you're deficient in anything and also see if there's some root cause if you're injury prone. Turns out I had a vitamin D deficiency so I started taking a ton of D+K2, couple years later I got back into running and building up mileage pretty realistically and went couch to 50k in 8 months, before that I was always getting injured. Not saying it's specifically that, could be lots of things or nothing, but in my case I found that thing out and the sky was the limit afterwords. It'd be cool if it was some overlooked thing like that for you

Basically any movement or prolonged pose becomes it's own exercise.

"wall sit" might not be good for the ankle.

What you can do for your back, are exercises laying on your stomach, and then lifting and moving arms and legs. Up and down, can slow or faster, just holding them up isn't easy either. You'll figure out which poses tire and train which muscles. If you do it straight it's more for those along your spin, if you spread your arms it's more for the shoulders.

Side leg raises are probably another idea that shouldn't put strain on your injuries.

The rest kind of depends how much you can even just stand. Maybe something involving Therabands?

I like doing chair yoga when I'm having severe flare ups! There's some good youtube videos on it, and it's safe for ankles and wrists!

Water aerobics and yoga are usually the best options. I would try to find a yoga instructor skilled in physical therapy / disability modifications to the poses. Water aerobics is typically specifically designed for physical rehab so you're more likely to find most of those classes are geared towards that. If affordability is a problem you may find that your health insurance, even or possibly even especially if it's public health insurance. In the gym though you want anything that's low impact and low intensity like maybe an elliptical on the very lowest resistance setting.

From top of my head, you can add superman, side plank, bridge, fire hydrant, donkey kick. Maybe you can attach weights to your forearms too for the arm muscles.

Catch

Look into AthleanX. The guy who made it was a physical therapist for a MLB team, and everything in it is basically straight out of the PT manual.

Start with very low weight, and only move up when you can do 4 sets of 25 reps without any fatigue.