Sports can be a great means to keep fit, develop self-confidence and meet new people. Whether you're a world-class athlete or a laid-back weekend warrior, odds are at some point you have suffered an injury. Roughly 70 percent of recreational players experience some type of aches, pains, or discomfort in their joints and muscles during a match.
If you participate in any type of sports routinely, it's almost inevitable that you'll end up injuring yourself at some point in your athletic activity. That's because the human body goes through constant wear and tear.
When we perform repetitive movements or activities, our muscles become worn out and start breaking down sooner. Over time, these microtrauma injuries can cause structural injury in the form of muscle stiffness and/or tendonitis.
An injury will prevent you from playing your favorite sport, keep you from the courts or turf for an extended period, or lead to long-lasting repercussions such as persistent pain or reduced range of motion. Furthermore, if left untreated, these injuries can also develop into something more severe in the future.
Some common types of sports injuries include:
- Connective Tissue Injuries
- Vestibular Conditions
- Soft Tissue Injuries
- Knee Injuries
- Apophyseal Pain
- Shoulder Joint
- Body Balance
- Joint Issues
- Mobility Challenges
- Joint Dysfunction
- Muscles Sprains
- Ligamentous Sprains
The good news is that a sports injury doesn't have to keep you off the field or court for long. Physiotherapy can help deal with a lot of sports-related injuries and prevent them from becoming recurrent. Here are six ways of how physiotherapy might help your sports injury more quickly:
1. Reinforce Your Existing Muscles
Every motion you carry out in your sport (such as throwing a baseball, running a marathon, or diving in swimming) requires a particular amount of strength in the muscles you utilize.
In the case of throwing a ball, that includes the muscles in your elbow, shoulder, hand, and wrist. With time though, these muscles can come to be imbalanced and weak. This imbalance can develop as we grow older and our bodies shed muscle mass.
It can likewise happen if you have been playing a sport for a very long time without providing your muscles an opportunity to rest and recuperate in between bouts of activity.T
Thankfully, you can avoid injuries and enhance your performance on the field with the strengthening workouts your physiotherapist in Calgary NW can show you. What's more, building up your existing muscles can help fix the pain, tightness, and swelling that come along with any sports injury.
2. Alleviate Tendonitis and Strain
The connecting tissue in your joints is subject to inflammation and injury due to the continuous movement of your joints. However, if your swelling is triggered by a tiny tear in the tendon, then physiotherapy can help to heal your tendonitis. Tendonitis is an inflammatory problem that can build up in your tendons when they become irritated and unpleasant.
Certain activities, such as running or leaping, basketball, and tennis are particularly likely to trigger it. If you suffer from tendonitis or a strain, physiotherapy can care for your injury quicker. It can likewise help you protect against a strain injury from taking place down the road.
3. Develop New Motion and Conditioning Exercises
As you age, your muscles and joints generally come to be less flexible. This may be due to genetic makeup, injury, or an absence of frequent exercise. In addition, if you've been playing a sport for a long period, you may have suffered structural imbalances that cause you to be more susceptible to injury.
For instance, your shoulder muscles may be stronger than your lower back muscles, which puts stress on the lower spine.If you want to prevent injury and increase your flexibility, you should make an effort to cultivate new movement and strengthening workouts.
Your physical therapist can show you the right workouts to increase your overall flexibility and revitalize joint performance. Doing so can serve to help heal an injury, reduce your risk of injury, enhance your flexibility, and increase your overall range of movement.
4. Enhance Your Range of Motion
When you're hurt, you frequently need to restrict your activities and/or your range of motion. As a result, you risk suffering pain, tightness, and loss of flexibility. Thankfully, as you heal, your joints and muscles recover their complete range of motion.
This process can happen quickly; however, it generally takes about 14 days for your muscles to begin to recover and get back to their normal shape.
To prevent injury and speed up the healing cycle, physiotherapy can apply therapies and exercises that improve your range of mobility. Doing this can alleviate discomfort, increase your flexibility, and help you return to your normal activities faster.
5. Decrease Inflammation and Tightness
As you recover from an injury and your muscle tissues get stronger, you may form an accumulation of scar tissue. This is a regular part of the healing process and can help defend against future injuries.
It can also help you get back to your normal activities much faster. To minimize your risk of developing stiffness, physiotherapy treatment will help you maintain your mobility and agility, even when you're not working out.
6. Avoid Recurring Strain Injuries
A repetitive strain injury takes place when a previously minor injury comes to be aggravated as you go back to a more intense level of activity. For example, if you have been playing basketball for a few weeks and you try to leap higher than you generally do, you could wind up reinjuring your ankle.
Recurring strain injuries can take place in any sport when the regular level of activity is increased, but they are most typical in sports that include repetitive movements, such as weight training, baseball, soccer, football, and basketball. Physiotherapy can eliminate strain injuries by re-aligning muscles and ligaments, massaging out knots or discomfort points, and enhancing blood circulation to the afflicted part of your body.
Wrap Up
Physio can help treat many sports injuries, including things like sprains, pressures, stress fractures, tendonitis, joint pain, and joint dislocation. Sometimes, you might even be able to stop injuries from taking place in the first place. If you want to prevent injuries and increase your performance on the field or court, you should try our sports physiotherapy treatment plan.
Sports physiotherapy at Alberta PT will help you build up your existing muscles, deal with your tendonitis and strain, develop new movement and strengthening workouts, improve your range of motion, reduce swelling and tightness, prevent repetitive strain injuries, minimize reinjuries and enhance physical activity.
