Sports can be a terrific way to keep fit, build self-confidence, and meet new friends.
Whether you’re a world-class athlete or a casual weekend warrior, odds are at some point in time you’ve suffered an injury. As a matter of fact, roughly 70 percent of all leisure players experience some kind of aches, pains, or soreness in their joints and muscles during an event. If you play any kind of sport routinely, it’s practically inevitable that you’ll end up hurting yourself at some point in your athletic activities.
That’s because the body is subjected to constant wear and tear. When we carry out recurring movements or activities, our muscles end up being tired and start breaking down more quickly.
Gradually, these microtrauma injuries can lead to structural damage in the form of muscle stiffness and/or tendinitis. An injury may keep you from participating in your favorite sport, keep you off the courts or turf for a prolonged period of time, or cause long-lasting consequences including persistent discomfort or reduced range of movement. Furthermore, if left without treatment, these injuries can also become something more serious in the future.
What Can A Sports Injury Result In?
- Acute injury
- Soft tissue injury
- Neck pain
- Pelvic pain
- Cartilage injury
- Knee pain
- Connective tissue injury
- Piriformis muscle spasms
- Musculoskeletal conditions
The bright side is that a sports injury doesn’t need to keep you off the field or court for long. Physiotherapy can help to treat many sports-related injuries and keep them from becoming chronic. Here are 6 ways physiotherapy might serve to help treat your sports injury more quickly:
1. Therapeutic Exercises to Strengthen Your Existing Muscles
You have probably heard of this previously. Every movement you carry out during your sports activities (such as tossing a baseball, running a race, or diving in swimming), it requires a certain level of strength in the muscles you use. In the case of tossing a ball, that includes the muscles in your elbow, shoulder, hand, and wrist. With time though, these muscles can become imbalanced and weak. This problem can develop as we age and our bodies lose muscle mass. It can also happen if you have been playing a sport for a long period without providing your muscles an opportunity to rest and recover in between rounds of activity.
Luckily, you can prevent injuries and enhance your effectiveness on the field with the strengthening exercises your local sports physiotherapist can teach you. What’s more, building up your existing muscles can help to deal with the discomfort, tightness, and inflammation that come with any sports injury.
2. Get Rid Of Tendonitis and Tension
The tissue in your joints is prone to swelling and injury because of the continuous motion of your joints. However, if your inflammation is caused by a small tear in the tendon, then physiotherapy can help relieve your tendonitis.
Tendinitis is an inflammatory problem that can build up in your tendons when they come to be inflamed and painful. Specific activities, such as running or leaping, basketball, and tennis are especially likely to cause it. If you struggle with tendonitis or a sprain, physiotherapy can treat your injury more quickly. It can likewise help you avoid a sprain injury from happening down the road.
3. Develop New Movement and Conditioning Exercises
As you age, your muscles and joints normally become less flexible. This could be because of genetic makeup, injury, or a lack of regular physical activity. Additionally, if you’ve been participating in a sport for a long time, you may have developed structural imbalances that cause you to be more susceptible to injuries. For instance, your shoulder muscles might be stronger than your lower back muscles, which puts stress on the lower spinal column.
If you want to avoid injury and increase your agility, you want to make an effort to cultivate a new movement and strengthen your workouts. Your sports physiotherapist can show you the best exercises to increase your overall flexibility and restore joint performance. Doing so can help repair an injury, minimize your risk of injury, improve your flexibility, and increase your total range of motion.
4. Improve Your Range of Motion
When you’re hurt, you often need to limit your activities and/or your range of motion. Because of this, you risk suffering discomfort, stiffness, and loss of flexibility. Fortunately, as you recover, your joints and muscles recover their full range of motion. This process can happen rapidly, however, it generally takes about fourteen days for your muscles to start healing and return to their regular shape.
To prevent injury and speed up recovery, physiotherapy treatment plans include manual therapy, dry needling, Graston technique, chronic injury management, rehabilitative exercises, and workouts that improve your range of motion. Doing this may eliminate discomfort, increase your flexibility, and help you return to your typical activities faster.
5. Decrease Inflammation and Tightness
As you heal from an injury and your muscles get more powerful, you may experience an accumulation of scar tissue. This is a normal part of the healing process and can help defend against future injuries. It can help you get back to your normal activities much sooner. To decrease your risk of developing stiffness, physiotherapy will help you to maintain your range of motion and flexibility, even when you’re not exercising.
6. Eliminate Repetitive Strain Injuries
A repetitive strain injury happens when a previously minor injury comes to be exacerbated as you return to a more extreme level of activity. For example, if you’ve been playing basketball for a couple of weeks and attempt to jump higher than you usually do, you might reinjure your ankle.
Recurring strain injuries can occur in any sport when the typical level of activity is increased, however, they’re most typical in sports that involve recurring motion, such as weightlifting, baseball, soccer, football, and basketball. Physiotherapy can ease strain injuries by re-aligning muscles and ligaments, rubbing out knots or discomfort points, and increasing the blood flow to the affected part of your body.
Bottom Line
At Full Function Rehab & Wellness Clinic in Woodbridge, our specialized treatment plan can help alleviate a wide range of sports injuries, including things like sprains, pressures, stress fractures, tendonitis, joint pain, and joint dislocation. In some cases, you might even be able to prevent future injuries from occurring, to begin with.
Our range of treatment options can help you avoid injuries and increase your performance on the field or court. Our physiotherapy services is an effective treatment program provided by a professional team to help you strengthen your existing muscles, deal with your tendonitis and pressure injury, develop new movement and strengthening exercises, improve your range of motion, reduce swelling and stiffness, prevent repetitive strain injuries, and avoid reinjuries. Proudly serving Vaughan and Woodbridge communities!
