Sports Injuries

There are a lot of youth that get injured from sports because of their lack of knowledge about sports injuries along with its causes, prevention, and rehabilitation. Specifically, a sports injury is “damage to tissue of the body or muscle skeletal system that occurs while playing sports”.(interview with Ted Wedell) There are many types of sports injuries that can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common of these include sprains, strains, and tendonitis.(Thompson, Elaine)

A sprain is the partial or complete tear of ligaments supporting a joint. A strain is the complete separation of a muscle fiber at the place where it attaches to its tendon. (Sports Medicine) When this happens to the body, tendinitis occurs in the area, which is the inflammation of the tendons. These injuries occur often when the youth are being pushed too hard, play hurt, or push the limits of their body. Some injuries that occur as youth cause pain as an adult. Arthritis, back, and neck pain are the most common of the results from youth injury.

Youth are receiving these injuries because they are not prepared enough to play sports. Kids need to be learning the fundamentals of warming up in order to build a strong routine to prevent injury. Going strait into their physical activity cold with no prerequisite is bad for the body. There needs to be a some cardiovascular activity in order to get the blood flowing and muscles warm. When you warm up, you are getting your heart rate pumping and muscles warm so that they are less susceptible to injury. The lack of stretching before physical activity deprives the muscles of oxygen. Stretching makes it so that more oxygen can get into the muscles so they don’t get as tired as fast, and more blood is flowing through them. When children get injured in sports, it hinders their performance in other tasks such as school, family, and friends. There are many long lasting injuries that can occur while playing sports. Some are ACL knee tears, rotator cuff injuries, and Tommy John syndrome.

There are a lot of ways to prevent and rehabilitate injuries. Three key components to preventing injury are stretching, warm-up/cool-down, and weight training. There are a lot of ways to stretch out your body in order to not get injured from sports. Your stretching activity should include routines that target the upper body such as shoulder, neck, and arms. Lower body stretches should include leg stretches through calves, quads, hamstrings, and inner thigh. Doing others such as trunk stretches can help prevent back pain.(Health Action: warming up and cooling down in your exercise routine) Stretching is a critical component in your warm-up routine.

Youth need to be doing warm ups and they need to cool down after exercising also. A warm up should consist of 8 to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise such as running/jogging, swimming, biking, or other various activities.(Health Action) Warming up before your exercise increases your flow of blood in your body and makes you more flexible. When you are more flexible, you are a lot less susceptible to injury.(Ted Wedell) Cooling down slowly decreases your heart rate back down near the normal rate in a safe manner. Cool downs can consist of the same things as warm ups but usually at a slower pace.

Weight training is a big component in both the prevention of sports injuries, and the healing of them also. When you lift weights, you are strengthening the muscles and tendons in your body so that they are less susceptible to injury. With stronger muscles and tendons, they are less likely to get sprained or strained. There are many ways of weight training and they each have different purposes.

When you weight train, your muscles will only get stronger when they are forced past their limit. Circuit training consists of going quickly from station to station and keeps your body moving. Circuit weight training is a specific program to help maintain and increase lean muscle mass. The purpose is to keep you moving and keep your heart rate elevated.

Doing resistance training increases muscle size. The purpose of this is to do exercises that isolate and work specific areas. Therefore there are specific exercises to do to strengthen specific muscles. Some of these include the incline seated dumbbell curls to strengthen biceps, and the triceps push down for triceps. By doing Olympic lifts such as the power clean or clean and jerk, your result is explosive speed and power. (Weight Training, Brain Mac)

Different athletes aim for different results from lifting. People who want more brute strength will do very high weight but low repetitions. Others may be looking for endurance and will do low weight and a lot of reps. Weight training for rehabilitation should be done using low weight and more reps. (Weight Training, Brain Mac)

Another key rehabilitation technique is R.I.C.E. This stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. Injuries always need to be rested and should never be played on. While resting, icing the injury is necessary for a quicker heal. When the injury is iced, it decreases swelling which allows more blood flow that can help with healing. (Ted Wedell) Compressing the injury is necessary along with elevating it above heart level to reduce swelling.

Finally, nutrition is important in both prevention and recuperation from injury also. You should always drink plenty of water and take appropriate rest preiods. (Dean Olsen) A daily multivitamin also is a good choice to take in the morning to keep you energized and healthy when your diet is lacking all the proper vitamins and minerals.

For my make a difference, I am going to run through physical activities for a stable warm up that is fun at the same time. I am going to teach a P.E class about sports injuries. Kids need to know how to stretch properly. I will teach proper stretching techniques and stretches. I will be teaching the class about the different types of injuries and some of the most common. Youth lack basic injury prevention techniques so I will first be teaching them about proper warm up and cool down techniques. Youth need to know what can happen to them if they don’t do any preparation for sports and physical activity.