Sports can be a fantastic means to keep fit, build self-confidence, and meet new friends.
Whether you’re a world-class athlete or a laid-back weekend warrior, odds are at some point you have suffered an injury. As a matter of fact, around seventy percent of leisure players will experience some type of aches, pains, or discomfort in their joints and muscles during the course of a game. If you play any type of sport routinely, it’s nearly unavoidable that you’ll end up injuring yourself at some point during your athletic activities.
That’s because the body goes through constant wear and tear. When we carry out repeated actions or activities, our muscles become tired and begin breaking down faster.
Gradually, these microtrauma injuries can result in structural injury in the form of muscle tightness and/or tendonitis. An injury will prevent you from playing your best-loved sport, keep you from the courts or turf for an extended period of time, or cause long-term consequences such as persistent discomfort or decreased range of movement. Additionally, if left without treatment, these injuries can also become something more severe in the future.
Some common sports injuries include:
- knee injuries
- body aches
- muscle strains
- muscle strength issues
- muscle tension
- connective tissues injuries
- chronic sports injuries
- cycling injuries
- everyday injuries
The bright side is that a sports injury does not need to keep you off the playing field or court for long. Physiotherapists in Hamilton Mountain can help deal with lots of sports-related injuries and keep them from becoming chronic.
Mentioned below are ways physiotherapy may serve to help heal your sports injury quicker:
Build Up Your Existing Muscles
You’ve probably heard this benefit before. Every action you perform in your sport (such as throwing a baseball, running a marathon, or diving in swimming) requires a certain amount of strength in the muscles you use. When it comes to tossing a ball, that includes the muscles in your elbow, shoulder, hand, and wrist.
Over time though, these muscles can become imbalanced and weak. This problem can develop as we get older and our bodies shed muscle mass. It can also occur if you have been playing a sport for a long period of time without giving your muscles a chance to rest and recover between rounds of activity.
Luckily, you can avoid injuries and increase your performance on the field with the strengthening workouts your physiotherapist can teach you. Moreover, strengthening your existing muscles can help to solve the pain, tightness, and swelling that come along with any sports injury.
Treat Tendonitis and Strain
The connecting tissue in your joints is subject to inflammation and injury due to the constant movement of your joints. However, if your inflammation is caused by a small tear in the tendon, then physiotherapy can really help alleviate your tendonitis.
Tendonitis is an inflammatory problem that can develop in your tendons when they become irritated and unpleasant. Certain activities, such as running or jumping, basketball, and tennis are especially likely to cause it. If you experience tendonitis or a strain, physiotherapy can care for your injury more quickly. It can also help you prevent a strain injury from taking place in the future.
Cultivate New Movement and Conditioning Exercises
As you age, your muscles and joints usually become less flexible. This may be because of genetics, injury, or an absence of regular physical activity. Furthermore, if you’ve been playing a sport for a long time, you may have developed structural imbalances that make you more vulnerable to injuries. For example, your shoulder muscles could be more powerful than your lower back muscles, which puts stress on the lower spine.
If you want to protect against injury and increase your flexibility, you should attempt to cultivate new movement and strengthening exercises. Your physical therapist can show you the best workouts to increase your flexibility and revitalize joint performance. Doing so can help repair an injury, lower your danger of injury, improve your flexibility, and increase your total range of motion.
Enhance Your Range of Motion
When you’re hurt, you frequently have to restrict your activities and/or your range of movement. Because of this, you run the risk of developing pain, tightness, and loss of flexibility. Fortunately, as you heal, your joints and muscles gain back their complete range of movement. This process can take place very rapidly; however, it typically takes about 14 days for your muscles to begin to recover and get back to their regular shape.
To prevent injury and speed up the healing process, physiotherapy can apply a variety of techniques (manual therapy, active release therapy, advanced orthopedic care, and exercises that enhance your range of motion). Doing this may relieve pain, increase your mobility, and help you get back to your normal activities sooner.
Decrease Swelling and Stiffness
As you recover from an injury and your muscles get more powerful, you might develop an accumulation of scar tissue. This is a normal part of the healing cycle and can help to defend against future injuries. In fact, it can help you get back to your typical activities much faster. To decrease your danger of suffering from stiffness, physiotherapy will help you maintain your range of mobility and flexibility, even though you’re not exercising.
Avoid Recurring Strain Injuries
A recurring strain injury occurs when a previously small injury ends up being 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 you attempt to jump higher than you generally do, you could end up reinjuring your ankle.
Repetitive strain injuries can occur in any sport when the regular level of activity is increased, but they’re most typical in sports that include repetitive movements, such as weight training, baseball, football, soccer, and basketball. Physiotherapy treatment can eliminate strain injuries by re-aligning muscles and ligaments, massaging out knots or pain points, and raising the blood flow to the afflicted part of your body.
Final Thoughts
A professional physiotherapy treatment plan can help alleviate many sports injuries, including things like sprains, strains, stress fractures, tendonitis, joint discomfort, and joint dislocation. In many cases, you may even have the opportunity to prevent injuries from happening in the first place. If you want to prevent injuries and increase your effectiveness on the field or court, you should try Gage Physiotherapy & Foot Clinic.
Our experienced physiotherapists can help you build up your existing muscles, treat your tendonitis and strain, develop fresh motion and strengthening workouts, improve your range of movement, decrease inflammation and tightness, help you avoid repetitive strain injuries, and minimize reinjuries.
Contact us today!
Valerie Van Woudenberg
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