Sports Injury Prevention

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

― Benjamin Franklin

 

1. Single Leg Squat with Closed Eyes Progressively work your way up to 3 sets of 15 reps

 

2. Single Leg Balancing on Wobble Board Balance for 30 secs to 1 min, close your eyes for additional challenge

 

3. Single Leg Star Hops Hop from the centre to an edge of the tape and back again, repeat at all the edges. Precision first before speed.

 

Sherwin Goh

Participating in sports undeniably provide many health benefits, but they also increase the risk of injuries. To combat this heightened risk of injuries, precautionary measures must be taken, and we enter the realm of sports injury prevention.

Ways to reduce risk of injuries range from decreasing external risk factors (e.g. wearing protective gear and proper maintenance of the sporting environment), to reducing internal risk factors (e.g. use of proper sport-specific techniques to prevent overuse injuries and improving personal physical fitness).

This article will focus  on practical methods of training that can be incorporated in your workouts. For starters, it is important to understand the term Progressive Training, which will prevent most injuries that occur due to overuse of certain muscle groups. Progressive training advocates the gradual increase of training volume, through incremental increases in training frequency (no. of trainings/week) or load (e.g. distance or weight/training) session.

Your exercise or sport routine should always start with a warm-up, as a warmed muscle requires more force and stretch to produce a muscular tear. Increased muscular temperature increases the speed of nerve transmission and hence muscle contraction speed, reducing reaction time and allows the sportsperson to avoid obstacles that may cause an injury. As different sports require greater usage of certain muscle groups, warm-up exercises should be sport-specific and mimic the actions used during the sport. An example of a warm-up programme for soccer would be the FIFA 11+ Manual, where research has shown a 30-50% reduction in injuries køb medicin i udlandet.

 

Cooling-down after your activity should include stretches as they improve the compliance of the muscle-tendon unit. This prevents overloading of the unit, as it can absorb and release more energy, reducing injuries in sports that require jumping and bouncing activities (e.g. badminton and soccer).

Strength/resistance training is next on the list that should be done by everyone. Gains in muscular strength as a physiological adaptation from resistance training has long been linked to the prevention of sports injuries. Adaptations include increased thickness and strength of connective tissue (e.g. ligaments and tendons), which enable greater loads and impacts to be tolerated during sporting activities hence minimising injuries..

Lastly, Core Stability, Proprioception and Plyometric training should be done to improve balance, as poor balance has been linked to an increase of two to seven times the rate of injury. Due to the prevalence of ankle and knee sprains, the following injury prevention exercises will target the prevention of these injuries at newphaseblends.com.