Protect Yourself From Sport's Injuries

Aug 8
08:27

2011

Aaliyah Arthur

Aaliyah Arthur

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Sports injuries are common but they are avoidable if you take proper precautions. The most common injuries and how you can avoid those injuries is something every athlete should be aware of.

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The most common type of injuries associated with sports medicine are muscle pulls,Protect Yourself From Sport's Injuries Articles neck strain and pain, frozen shoulder injury, strained lower back injury, tennis elbow, runners knee, shin splints, sprained or twisted ankle, Achilles heel injury and foot arch pain and strain. What all of these injuries have in common is that they can occur because of over straining the muscles during a non-contact work out. In other words, athletes are not suffering the greatest sports injuries from football or other contact sports as much as they are suffering injuries from improperly working out, or overusing the same muscle groups when they are participating in a sporting event.

Sports medicine injuries don’t discriminate based on age or gender either. Young athletes in good overall health are just as likely to suffer from any of these common injures as older athletes since the injury is generally brought on by over use and then further compounded by improper healing and re-use.

Sports medicine came about as a way to specifically address these injuries and to work with athletes towards the goal of preventing injuries in the first place. A good way to prevent these injuries is to properly warm up before a work out and to use available tools to help muscles heal from a workout such as therapeutic massage and soaking muscles in a hot tub after a workout before the pain of over straining sets in.

Once an injury occurs it will likely become a reoccurring problem if the injured muscle group isn’t healed properly. Proper healing from a sports injury calls for another aspect of sports medicine and that is the use of physical therapy and time. The biggest root cause for injuries to reassert themselves is because the athlete rushed the healing process or simply did not give the injured area enough time to heal correctly and completely.

Most athletes accept being injured as part of the price tag for being an athlete whether that is as a professional or an amateur but being injured and causing permanent damage to your body isn’t the price you have to pay if you do things right. Most athletes who recover from an injury report they felt they could have avoided the injury if they had taken proper precautions to include warming up longer and staying within their scope of abilities instead of pushing the boundaries. Athletes also reported that they felt they had ignored warning signs that they were pushing their bodies to far because they didn’t want to be sissies and stop a workout that they knew was causing physical damage to themselves.

Finally athletes reported that they felt they had compounded the injury by not cross training properly in the first place which would have alleviate the over strain on their muscle group. They also felt they had delayed seeking medical care and exasperated the harm.

So if you’re an athlete pay attention to the warning signs because these common injuries are avoidable with the proper care.