 I've got some bad news. I've pulled my quad muscle on my right leg and hopefully I'm not out for too long, but I thought, hey, let's make a video on how to heal a muscle tear or a muscle pull. And this applies to any injury, whether you pulled your quad or your hamstring or you sprained your ankle. These same principles will help you recover quicker. And I've broken the healing process down into three phases. So the first phase is the immediate phase. What do you do right when that injury happens? The second phase is the first 72 hours because those are so important. And the final phase, the third phase is the rehabilitation phase, what you do until you're back until full fitness. So let me start by telling you the story. It was a tournament today, this morning. It was the very first game of the tournament. I was late getting there. I showed up about kickoff, right at kickoff. And they were like, hey, can you start? So obviously I wanted to start. So I said, yes, I'll start. I went on without proper warm up. And one of the first plays, I hit a cross to the back post and I just felt my muscle tear in my right quad. And I knew right away that was pretty bad. So this is the immediate phase. What do you do right away? Well, first, let me say, I try to play a bit. And usually when that happens, we all want to keep playing. So we try to play through it. But what you need to do, if you know it's a pull, you need to stop right away. Now, there is a difference between a muscle tweak and a muscle pull. How do you know the difference? Well, sometimes you might kick a ball or early in the game, you get a little tweak. And you kind of notice it, but you keep playing and it doesn't hurt. You're aware of it, but it doesn't hurt. A muscle pull or a tear, let's say every time you try to kick the ball after that happens, well, there's pain. If that's the fact, if that's the case in your scenario, you need to stop right away. So don't worry about being tough, don't worry about playing through the pain. I know you want to play, I know you want to help your team. We have to realize the more you play, the worse you make this injury and the harder it's going to be to recover, the longer it's going to take you. So swallow your pride right away, stop playing. Now, you do not want to stretch it out. You don't want to try to stretch it out. You don't want to massage it. You don't want to put heat on it. Because right now it's swelling. And if you are stretching the muscle, if you are massaging the muscle, you're actually breaking more blood cells and you're going to make it worse. So what you want to do instead is get compression on it right away. You want to get compression right away, so you want to wrap it up and you want to get ice right away. And you want to get off your feet as soon as possible. And I also wrote here in the immediate phase, but throughout all these phases, you need to stay positive. Yes, it sucks. But if you're just going to sit there and cry and complain and feel sorry for yourself, you're only going to make this process worse. And you're probably not going to have the right state of mind to get through this. Instead of focusing on your training and becoming a better player, you need to focus on your recovery. Treat it the same. Because if you have that same focus, you'll get through this quicker. And in the end, it's going to make you stronger. It's also going to make you mentally stronger. Okay, so that's the first phase. Compression, ice, rest as soon as possible. Swallow your pride, get off your feet as soon as possible. So in the second phase, the first 72 hours, so three days. This is kind of immediate the first day, but the next two days as well, I want you to do this. And all you should be doing is focusing on resting as much as possible, but also reducing the swelling as much as possible. So how are you going to do this? You're going to first, you need to find the point of damage. Okay, so you need to feel, you need to feel it out. You need to feel where the actual pull is. It might be here, it might be here. You kind of have an idea, but I want you to find where is the full pull? Is it just right here or is it right in my, my own right now? It's pretty long. It's like starting, and I can just feel it by pushing and you can feel sore. Again, you don't want to massage it, but you want to know where it is. Okay, so it's kind of right here. I can feel it's all the way up there. So it's like here. Okay, so find the point of damage because you want to work on that point of damage. Okay, so first things we said, ice. So in here, I just have a blanket that wraps some ice. And you never want to put ice straight on your skin because you can actually get ice burn. And you're going to have like a scar and a scab on your legs. So that's not nice. So always try to wrap in something, whether that's a plastic bag. I use this blanket because I think I can feel the ice a bit more and I can mold it to my leg. Okay, I can mold it however I want and I'll just use this for a bit and then I'll put it back in the freezer. Okay, so your best friend for the next couple of days is going to be this compression wrap. So you do not, and during that immediate phase as well, you do not want to wrap extremely tight. Because although you want to reduce swelling, you do not want to stop the blood flow into your injury. Okay, you still need blood to go there. So if this is super tight, you're not going to get any blood traveling there. You just want to keep a light wrap on it. And I've got a little clip here if you've got some tape, but the clip's better if you're taking it on and off. So just like that, okay, I'm going to wrap it up. And I'm going to do this for the whole day. If you really want to recover quicker, you're going to focus on this all day, if you can, if you have that luxury. So for every hour, I'm going to put this on for 20 minutes, then I'm going to take it off for about 40 minutes. And at the next hour, I'm going to put it back on for 20 minutes, and I'm just going to keep doing that, okay? I'm also going to elevate, okay? So you want to elevate because this is going to help reduce swelling, it's going to have more blood getting out of your leg. And how do you reduce swelling? You want to get your, you want to get your injured part below your heart, okay? Because the blood's pumping from your heart. So ideally I would be something like this, laying back down here, okay? Trying to get this as high as possible. And just rest and relax. I've got a couple of tools here. And one of the tools I have is this TV remote. Because honestly, like I said, you want to reduce swelling and you want to rest as much as possible. Just get off this leg. So you just want to be chilling, watching soccer, analyzing, but resting and reducing swelling. Okay, so the other thing is, I'm going to have this on for 20 minutes. Like I said, every hour for 20 minutes, then I'm going to take it off. Now between times, what I'm doing also, so I just throw that back in the freezer, got an ice pack as well, whatever you guys have, use the tools that you have. Okay, so when I take that off, I'm still, I'm going to keep this compressed. And what I have here is just some oils. And these oils are anti-inflammatory oils. So they're going to help reduce the swelling as well. Now you can take like ibuprofen, you can take pills. Personally, I like to stay away from medication like that and pills. And I'd rather do the natural stuff. So it's up to you to do the research and do what you think is best. But if you want to take ibuprofen and stuff like that to reduce the swelling, you can do that as well. But what I have in here is some olive oil, some peppermint oil and some clove oil. And these have just all been shown to reduce swelling and reduce muscle pain as well. Okay, so I'm just going to put on a bit of that oil and then I'm going to wrap this leg up again. And like I said, it's about reducing the swelling, but you don't want it so tight that no blood at all is pumping to your leg and you're just walking off blood flow. Okay, so I'm just going to have a light compression around that point of damage that you discovered and then you're going to elevate again and you're just going to chill out. Okay, this first 72 days, this is all you're going to do. Rest and reduce swelling. Okay, so that's the second phase. And also I wrote here that you do not want to test it out. Okay, just accept the fact. Yes, it sucks. Just accept the fact though that you've had this muscle pull and that in order to get through it, you do not want to put it through more pain. So you don't want to be testing it out. Like, oh, is it better already? Is it better now? No, those first three days, just accept the fact that you've got this injury. Now do not test it out. I'm not going to like flex my leg. I'm not going to try kicking or try running and stretching and stuff. I'm saving that for the third phase, which we'll go into right now. Okay, so the third phase is the rehabilitation phase. So that second phase, I'm trying to reduce the swelling. I'm trying to rest as much as possible and reduce the swelling. After those first three days, we're going to assume that most of the swelling that happened, like let's say you had a bruise or you had a Charlie Bors, after those first three days, that's when all that swelling, all that damage and your body's repairing itself, that's when most of that stops. Okay, so after that, the next three days, I'm going to go into the rehabilitation phase. This is where I'm going to use heat. This is where I'm going to start stretching and massaging and doing some light exercise. Okay, so in this rehabilitation phase, now we think that the muscle has, or the injury has healed itself and now it's just really tight. So now we want to focus on loosening up this tight muscle. So I have a few tools here. And the first one here I have is a heat pad. Okay, so like I said in the beginning, you do not want to use heat. Now the muscle has swollen, it's kind of healed itself, it's really tight. Now we have to loosen it up. So now I want to start using heat. And again, I'll just put this heat wrap or this heat pad on like that. If you want to use a heat wrap or heat rub, something like that, whatever you have, use the tools that you have, but I'm just going to put this on and then I'm going to wrap it up again with the tensor bandage like that. Okay, so I'll do a bit of heat and then I might do a bit of massage. So I have a couple of tools here. You can do a foam roller. So like rolling on the ground and using a foam roller, it's going to hurt. We want to slowly build it up. In the beginning it starts small. Okay, don't go and do the most painful thing possible in the very beginning. You want to build up to it and you want to listen to your body. Like, okay, is it getting better? Is it getting a little better? Or do I need to rest more? Okay, so you can do foam rolling on the ground. You can use a lacrosse ball, like a hard ball and just give yourself a self massage. Again, I'm not going to do that right now because I've just injured myself. And also here I have a, what is called a thumper. And this is basically just like vibration. So you plug this in and this thing goes, and it's just going to loosen up my leg and vibrate all through the muscle and really loosen everything up. Okay, and on top of that, I'm going to be doing some light exercise. So I'm going to start stretching a little bit. I'm going to start jogging a little bit. I'm just going to start feeling out the muscle. And eventually I'm going to go to the field and I'm going to start trying things out. I'm going to start jogging slowly. Maybe I'll try some light passing or dribbling. Then I'll try some long passing. Then I'll try shooting. And I'll just listen to my body, okay? Do I need to do more rehabilitation as far as heat and stretching and loosening up the muscle? Or am I ready to go? Okay, so those are three phases and three things I want you to think about. The immediate, the first 72 hours are so important, especially for things like this, like a muscle pulls so important. And then the third phase, actually doing the proactive rest. Okay, so what most people do, they get an injury, they get a pull and then they just chill. They just sit there and they eat bad food and they feel sorry for themselves and they say, oh, this sucks. But they're not really doing anything to speed this recovery. Okay, you can't train, that sucks. But get over it, be positive and focus on this. Okay, I need to do proactive rest. I'm not just chilling here, waiting and then getting back out there and then going again, because you're just going to injure yourself again. Okay, so focus on the recovery of the muscle, go through those phases, put all your attention and focus and effort into the recovery and you're going to come back even faster. Okay, so I know I'm going to get through this quickly and I'll be back to playing in no time. I hope this advice has helped you. I know it's a lot of information so maybe watch this video a few times if you're going through this problem and I know it's going to help you. You're going to be back playing in no time. Please remember to like, comment, share this video and make sure you subscribe for more training videos. I'll talk to you real soon.