Sports are a great way to keep in shape, socialize with friends, and have some friendly competition. They are also a great way to unwind and improve your mentality after a long week of work. During the summer, there are a lot of relaxing sports that you can participate in, including golf, tennis, baseball, soccer, and volleyball. During the winter, hockey, skiing, snowboarding, and curling are all popular sports to try.
No matter what sport you play, there is a risk for injuries to your lower body, elbows, neck, and back. Even for sports like golf and curling where there is no contact, the repetitive motions can cause strains to your upper body, most commonly in your shoulders and neck.
What Are The Most Common Sports Injuries
Most people who play a sport will face some sort of strain or sprain. When you experience a strain, it is due to injuring muscle fibres or tendons. A sprain happens when you injure a ligament. If you need to make a sudden movement, like when you stop then skate full speed in hockey or chasing a runner in baseball, it can lead to tears in a ligament or tendon. When you overuse your muscles during a sport, you can inflame a tendon.
As mentioned above, when you use repetitive movements like swinging a golf club or a tennis racquet, you can sustain several types of injuries. When you swing a golf club, you are twisting and moving many muscles and body parts, including your shoulders, hips, legs and arms. These repetitive movements can cause muscles in your hip and lower back to strain. You can also cause issues to the discs in your spine.
Another body part that is susceptible to common sports injury is the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is the four shoulder muscles that have tendons which go through the shoulder joint. This gives you the power and control during your swing. If one of the tendons in the rotator cuff gets pinched, it can lead to tears or tendonitis in your shoulder.
Golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow are also common injuries with repetitive motion when you play sports. This is caused when tendons near your elbow become irritated or inflamed. You will know if you have tennis elbow when you try to grip your racquet, bat or club and a shockwave of pain travels up your arm when you make contact with the ball. If you don’t heal your tennis elbow right away, it can cause irritation for a longer period of time.
Other injuries that can occur during sports include shin splints, Achilles tendonitis, and patellar tendonitis. To help recover from these injuries and improve your performance at the same time, many people turn to physiotherapy for help. If you are curious about physiotherapy and how it can assist your recovery time, continue reading to learn more!
How Physiotherapy Can Help Heal Your Sports Injury
No matter how old you are or how experienced you are with the sport you are playing, injuries can still happen. If you have sustained an injury while playing a sport, the best way to get back into the game is by booking a physiotherapy session to help speed up your recovery.
A physiotherapist will help reduce your pain, regain movement in the injured body part, and help you build an exercise regime that will focus on healing and strengthening certain areas. Not only will a physiotherapist help with your healing journey, but they will also help prevent future injuries by strengthening your most used muscles that haven’t been injured.
If you are training to keep in shape during the off-season, you should still see a physiotherapist. When training, you will be lifting weights and working on your cardio, which does use a lot of the same motions and muscle groups. If you train too hard, you can actually weaken your muscles and have a higher chance of becoming injured.
When you work with a physiotherapist during your off-season, they can help improve your balance, stability, flexibility and strength so you can work out properly and start the new sports season off on the right foot. A physiotherapist can also set-up an off-season exercise plan that allows you to rest and strengthen certain muscles throughout the week for optimal performance. If you are looking to improve your performance from last year, than contact a physiotherapist can help you set new goals by giving you the ability to play your sport injury free and with more strength.
Author’s Bio
Colin Hegarty is a content writer for BreezeMaxWeb that helps businesses showcase their brand through enticing copy. When he’s not working, you can find him playing net in a local beer league or biking around the city.
