Form: Self analysis?

[ChrisWoj]

I did want to talk about this more because my personality type puts me at risk of your dad's Ibuprofen spiral.

Having never been a throwing athlete or almost 40 before, I've had to learn all the maintenance stuff on my own.

Since I have some slightly banged up joints that I never experienced before a couple years ago, I've had to figure out how I can make progress without going overboard. I still can't tell what's optimal because being fully recovered and rested at almost 40 still doesn't feel the same to me as it did at 20. So I guess I don't know what my "baseline" is supposed to be now.

I did change a lot of workout habits which has helped, but figuring out the best cycle between form and field work, playing, active recovery, and full recovery continues to challenge me.

That's rough. But at least you're aware! I just know that the key with the anti-inflammatories and ice is (important: I am not a trained medical professional, lol):

If you are not going to do anything that is going to really strain the injury, you should avoid them. There's no real short term impact, its not like you're gonna go a lil overboard on one injury and wind up with permanent severe loss of pliability, so if you're at all worried that you might be stressing an injury through heavy activity - use it. It's the usage over years that gets you, to where when you're 60 you've got soft tissue that just doesn't stretch or bend well anymore.

The old RICE acronym has people terrified of inflammation. Pair that with the proportion of the population that works somewhat strenuous manual labor and you've got a pretty insidious escalating effect on the population where the huge number of people who DO genuinely need ice and anti-inflammatories to get through their work day without ripping apart swollen tissue makes everybody think they need to reduce swelling.

But remember: SWELLING. IS. GOOD. (at least for soft tissue injuries that are not impacting the nervous system) It is a sign that the body is sending fluids filled with all the good stuff you need to heal. When you impede the travel of those good fluids, you create a poor healing environment and the tissues have to make do with what they have.