5 Ways to Help Prevent Athletic Injury
No matter who you are, you have probably experienced some sort of injury in your life. This blog post was created in order to help people find ways to prevent injury in all sorts of athletics. Follow these five tips and you will be on a good path to a healthy lifestyle.
1) Take Care of Your Body Outside of Scheduled Training
This is essential for injury prevention. Many athletes will train hard at practices or in games, but it is also what one does for their body outside of scheduled trainings. Simple things that can get overlooked are making sure you get enough sleep and are eating enough. Other things that can help prevent injury are yoga, staying hydrated, getting massages, taking ice baths, using heat pads, and stretching.
“Yoga is well known for an assorted amount of benefits ranging from increasing strength, flexibility, agility, balance, and metal agility. All of these are extremely crucial to have as an athlete. Core plays a big role in yoga and also in most sports. Most people don’t realize it but you use your core for almost everything you do! It stabilizes and allows for movement. Another really important quality to have as an athlete is flexibility. This can prevent athletes from many injuries allowing your muscles to stretch farther and preventing any taring. Flexibility will not only assist in an athlete’s lifestyle, but it will benefit you as you become older; it allows complete rotation of your muscles. This comes into play when people tend to grow older they tend not to move as much and they become stiff which can lead to aches and pains”
2) Create External & Internal Training Loads
External training loads is how an athlete tracks their workout. For example, in lifting weights they athlete may say they’ll do 5 sets of 10. Another example would be setting a total distance to run or bike. This is a great tip for injury prevention because it gives the athlete knowledge of exactly what needs to completed that day. On top of this, external training loads can be changed dependent on the athlete themselves. Don’t feel like you need to track the same sets as the person next to you, do what is best for you.
Internal training loads is how an athlete perceives their workout or training for that day. For example, the athlete may say they’d like it if their workout had an intensity level of 5 on a scale from 1 to 10 for that day. The beauty of this is that if it’s a personal training day, the athlete is in full control of changing the workout to their preferred intensity. This also helps a lot for days when you might not be feeling it. Or possibly the night before you slept poorly. Giving this proper rating helps decreases the odds of an athlete getting injured.
More info on External and Internal training loads can be found in “The training—injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder?” by Tim Gabbett. Click here to view this writing.
3) Take How Your Body Feels Into Consideration
“If your immune system is low, you'll likely make yourself sicker by working out. In the end, overtraining can be just as harmful to your body as not training enough. Treat your body kindly, and let it rest when it needs to”.
This may sound simple, but it is something that is often times overlooked by athletes. There is a general consensus in sports that you have to be tough, and “no pain no gain”, but this is not how being an athlete should be perceived. If something is hurting on your body, don’t just try and walk it off. Have a professional view it and see if there is something you can do to feel better. If you don’t have access to a trainer, sometimes it’s best just to give your body a break. Try taking a day off, and resting in order to come back stronger than you did before.
4) Dress Specifically for Your Training
Again, this tip may seem simple. Do Not overlook it though. The Sports listed to the right are sports that cause the most injuries. If you can think of one athlete from each of these sports, they all have different uniforms. If you play basketball, you may have to wear high top shoes to protect your ankles. In football you have to wear a helmet and pads. Soccer requires shin guards. The point is that even if you are just messing around, make sure you are wearing a proper wardrobe for your sport. This is a way to prevent common injuries.
For more info on what sports cause the most injury, click here.
5) Take Advice From Professionals
If you are someone who is lucky enough to train with either a personal or athletic trainer, use this to your advantage. They may be able to show you something you are training wrong that could eventually lead to injury. Verywellfit.com says, “If you just don't know where to begin, find a personal trainer who can get you started safely and help structure a fitness plan based on a clear set of goals (such as weight loss, muscle building, or aerobic fitness). A qualified trainer can help you avoid many of the bad habits that affect even the best of athletes, allowing you to concentrate on form rather than weight to achieve the best results. A few hour-long sessions may be all that you need”.
Some of these trainers really can be impactful. Not only are they trained to take proper care of you physically, but they will know how to talk to you on a mental level as well. For more information on this visit bocatc.org.
Now that you know the steps,
start applying them to your own life.
Different Views on Athletic Injury Prevention
Jared Moser is currently a senior at North Central College. He plays volleyball and golf at NCC and has had successful careers in both sports. He claims part of his success comes from his ability to stay healthy. He said that he goes to NCC’s athletic training office everyday before practice or a game. He believes that in sports, your body is bound to get sore, but it is up to you to take care of it correctly.
Amy Lynn Kucera is an employee at Thera-core in Lockport, IL. Thera-core is a place someone can go to for rehab as well as personal training. Amy Lynn Kucera goes on to say that she believes one of the most important things someone can do when involved in athletics is warm up and cool down. No matter the activity, she believes that is one of the most important things in order to prevent injury in athletics.
Samantha Ford is a nurse who has worked at many different medical centers. She has seen people recover from injury before, but she recommends in order to not get injured in the first place, one should always take any sort of physical activity seriously. It’s so easy in certain sports to get injured if you aren’t paying attention or aren’t wearing proper equipment.
Based on the Canadian Population Health Survey, from Carolyn Emery’s writing, “Also, 8% of adolescents drop out of recreational sporting activities annually because of injury”. She also mentions that, “Sport injuries account for 50% of all injuries to secondary school children”.
In Training Load and it’s Role in Injury Prevention, the author states, “The interest in injury prevention for athletes and team sports is generally motivated by the negative effects injuries can have on performance and the associated costs incurred by sporting organizations.1,2 Furthermore, common sense dictates that athletic performance cannot be optimized when athletes are restricted by injury. No coach wishes any athlete under his or her care to become injured, but it is true that, to maximize performance, training must sometimes be close to the limit of athlete tolerance, eg, between functional and nonfunctional overreaching while avoiding overtraining.3 Athletes and coaches might deliberately accept an increased injury risk as a tradeoff for potential performance benefits.4 Less common, however, may be the acceptance of risk by team managers, supporters, and the media, which may raise the pressure on staff to minimize injury occurrence and effects while maximizing athlete availability and physical output”.
Karson Eggert is a marketing major with a minor in sports management at North Central College. He also plays volleyball for the school, hoping to have a successful year. Karson is originally from Plainfield, IL, which is only about 30 minutes away from NCC’s campus. When Karson is older, he wants the ability to work with people, potentially through a job in sales. He’s always loved working with other people rooting from him always being on sports teams since a young age.