What are sports injuries?
Sports injuries, like the name, are injuries occurring from sports whether it be training, competing, simply working out, or going to the gym. No matter how athletic or ‘in shape’ you are we are all prone to sports injuries for several reasons. Overtraining, improper rehabilitation, and imbalanced training sessions are all common causes of sports injuries. Not all sports injuries result in broken bones or fractures. The most common sports injuries are sprains/strains tears and bruising otherwise known as soft tissue injuries, ACL, concussion, and hamstring injury.
Sports injuries can happen over time or can occur abruptly. In any case, it is important to know that sports injury prevention is just as important as the treatment for your sports injury.
So, what can you do to prevent sports injuries?
1. Use the proper technique
The wrong technical actions can cause excessive bending and stretching of joints and muscles of the body, this can lead to an injury; for example, tennis elbow is often caused by having a poor backhand technique.
2. Warm-Up
The purpose of warming up is to get your body from a static state to a tense state. You have to be in the right state prior to jumping into an intense sport or exercise. When your body isn’t in the right state it affects muscle strength, elasticity, flexibility, and necessary coordination making you more prone to a sports injury.
3. Don’t over train
Listen to your body. Do not over-train as it can lead to sports injuries. Over time your muscle strength, coordination, and response time will decrease making you more prone to mistakes and therefore increasing your chances of getting injured. Know when to stop and how much to load.
4. Stretch
Stretching increases your flexibility, improves your performance in physical activities and decrease your risk of sports injuries. Flexibility is very important when playing sports or exercising. Although many of us dislike doing it before a game, it is one of the simplest strategies to avoid a sports injury, especially if you are a beginner.
So what should you do after a Sports Injury?
Why is it important to consult with an experienced Sports Physiotherapist near you immediately after a Sports Injury?
- Scar Tissue- An experienced sports physiotherapist will treat the scar tissue and help prevent excessive scar tissue from forming. Scar tissue can cause persistent skin, muscle, and ligament pain and stiffness. Sports physio can prevent excessive scarring from forming with manual therapy, hands-on treatment, and electrical therapy. They will get your scar mobilized.
- Self-Awareness- Your ability to sense the position of your body, known as proprioception, is often damaged after an injury and a Physiotherapist can help retrain impaired proprioception, which is a common factor in re-injury.
- Wait and See- Waiting for an injury to self-heal can often cause more damage. Injuries don’t always heal themselves. It is always best to consult a professional to diagnose and advise on the proper steps to healing. An experienced physiotherapist will advise you on how to care for an injury and provide a treatment plan with a timeline to get you back to where you were and understand your goals for recovery and also consider your medical history. The most serious example is a fracture that will not heal if the bone is not held stationary long enough.
- New Habits- While in pain, we do not realize this but we tend to change our movement to compensate for the pain in the injured area, leading to muscle imbalances. These muscles begin to overcompensate for the injured muscles, resulting in re-injury or severe difficulties in other areas.
Sports injuries symptoms are very clear since it will cause pain, swelling, not being able to place weight on your knee etc.. if you’re suffering from any symptom, one of our experienced sports rehabilitation and athletic physical therapist can assess your sports injury and develop a treatment plan that will work to restore and prevent further injuries. We always talk to our patients to understand their full medical history and injury and work with our patients to devise a treatment plan to meet their goals. Always seek an experienced sports physiotherapist for advice on your individual injury.
