You’re injured.

Maybe it’s a minor irritating tweak, or perhaps a significant injury, or something in between.

Either way, your injury doesn’t have to be all bad; it can be an opportunity.

You want to keep training and moving, and you feel you’re missing out by taking time off, or you could be in the middle of training, and you have a competition coming up.

Maybe you have a suit goal. You know when you have to be in a suit somewhere, either at a wedding or at a beach?

In any instance, if you have a tweak or an injury, you gotta stay off of the thing, especially if you’re in pain.

The concept of active rehabilitation can keep you moving even though you might be injured. The idea behind active rehab is, don’t move the injured area and work around it.

I learned about active rehab when I was a professional dancer. As a dancer, if I got injured, I couldn’t stop dancing because it was my job. So I learned how to move in ways that rested the injured area. I never lost strength and could still keep dancing and training.

Think about it, you don’t need your shoulder to train your abs or legs. If your shoulder will take a couple of weeks to heal, that is a perfect opportunity to give the abs and legs the training and attention you have always wanted.

Use your injury as an opportunity. Train other areas of the body you might have otherwise neglected and just stabilize the injured area.

If you attempt to move the injury, try to work in a pain-free range of motion. By moving this way, you have increased your overall strength and probably trained in some areas you don’t typically work—more than likely, you have opened up some new mobility as well.

You can gain strength and mobility even with injuries. You can be stronger and return to activities better than you were before.

You can do this because you‘ve taken the time to turn your injury into an opportunity.