Physical Therapy and Sports Injury
October 29, 2019- Hector Flanagan
Sports injuries have laid off many athletes for seasons, games, and worse, careers.
Injuries are actually pretty common while participating in competitions, organized sports, fitness activities, or training exercises.
Poor training methods, lack of conditioning, and inadequate warm-up are a few of the causes of sports-related injuries.
Coping with these kinds of injuries often calls for physical rehabilitation. Physical therapy helps people regain strength and movement in parts of their body after an injury. Physical therapy can also help someone manage pain and prevent permanent damage and recurring problems.
Each sport carries its own risk of injury for its players.
Physical therapists are trained to help patients recuperate following an injury. As part of physical therapy, they can teach stretches, exercises, and techniques using specialized equipment to solve problems.
Common Sports Injuries
As per the National Institutes of Health, the most common sports injuries include knee injuries, sprains, shin splints, strains, swollen muscles, fractures, and dislocations.
These injuries should be appropriately addressed in order to keep the athlete safe. It is useful to examine the biomechanics of an athlete participating in a particular sport, therapists say.
Sports Injuries and Physical Therapy
Physical therapists need to identify and understand the injured structure and the extent of the injury before planning on treating it.
The rehabilitation of an injured player should carefully and meticulously be evaluated regularly. Injuries are time-dependent, meaning that the normal healing process of the body follows a pattern of the acute phase, subacute phase, and chronic phase.
The acute phase involves the R.I.C.E. (Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation) notion, which lets healing take place and controls inflammation.
The subacute phase is a control motion phase. The chronic phase is also a return to function phase in which the athlete gradually returns to pre-injury workout schedules.
What are the common ways that athletes get hurt?Depending on the kind of sports athletes participate in, they may be at risk for one or more of these kinds of injuries:
- Ankle injuries — Just about any athlete who runs a lot is at risk for an ankle injury. If the athlete rolls his ankle or if he twists it, he can strain or tear its connective tissue.
- Pulled muscles — Overusing the muscles, especially muscles that are tired after a long period of workout and performance can cause them to stretch or tear. This is prevalent in different areas of the legs because of constant running, jumping and switching back and forth that almost all kinds of sports require.
- Shin splints — Running for long hours can cause the muscles and connective tissue around your shin to get inflamed.
- Knee injuries — A sharp twisting of the knee or bending of it in the wrong way can cause a sprain to the ligaments in your knee.
- Tennis elbow — Known officially as tendinitis, tennis elbow happens when the muscles and connective tissues around your elbow become inflamed from overuse.
- Hip Flexor Strain — The hip flexors are muscles located on the upper-front side of your thigh. The major functions of the hip flexor muscles are to lift the knee toward your trunk, as well as help in moving your leg toward and away from the other leg. Hip flexors can be weak in people who sit a great deal at work or can become weak and stiff in individuals who have bad sitting posture. Sports injuries to these muscles can be caused by sprinting, running inclines and activities with sharp turns and sudden starts.
In addition to injuries to joints, muscles, and bones, concussions are also a hot topic in sports nowadays. A concussion is a traumatic head injury that may result in bad headaches, a changed level of alertness, or even unconsciousness. It may result when a moving object hits the head or the head hits an object.
Concussions are one of the most difficult-to-manage injuries in sports today, and physical therapy is an integral part of the multidisciplinary approach to the diagnosis and treatment of these injuries.
Prevention of Sports Injuries
Athletes and sports enthusiasts can prevent some sports injuries with proper warm-up and stretching and by working with a sports physical therapist.
Athletic trainers, physicians, and physical therapists continue to gain more knowledge in physical therapy and preventing and diagnosing sports injuries. Although some procedures would remain the standards of care, the means to address the injuries could definitely change.
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