Avoiding the motion that caused the injury is one of the most challenging issues to overcome. The body naturally tries to stop you from making the same mistakes again but these compensation strategies may significantly reduce athletic performance and in many cases actually cause new injuries because the original motor pattern was the ideal one and the compensated motion is just next best. Keep adding them up over the course of a human lifespan and it's no wonder our bodies break down so much.

In the short term it may be beneficial to avoid a certain muscle or area, but eventually you have to get it turned back on too.

Yep. Been dealing with diabetic foot ulcers for the past year+. No fun. Had one on the left that was pretty bad, and as that was healing all the offloading I was doing caused me to develop another one (less serious, luckily...) on the other foot.

Not just for athletes: this is equally applicable to keyboard jockeys with repetitive strain injuries. One of the reasons braces are actually counterindicated.

If we're supposed to avoid analgesics what are they doing in the acronym?

Analgesics are not anti inflammatory medication, they are pain relief meds, if I understand. Analgesics are ok for pain relief according to MEAT

Which painkillers are not also anti-inflammatory drugs? All the OTC ones are NSAIDs.

Well, acetaminophen is not NSAID, that's why you can take acetaminophen with ibuprofen for really bad headaches. That's what Excedrin is.

Well, I’d suggest making “A” stand for acetaminophen then.

Ah, it's not the only one, it's just one? If you want to share it that way, that's probably fine by everyone.

Not available in the US, but in many countries various acetaminophen+codeine preperations are available (at limited strength) OTC. "Tylenol 3" is a common one