Sports
INJURIES
Get in touch – Call / text: 07970 657041
What an injury means to you
My clinic is not all about sports injuries, but a lot of my patients do injure themselves when they are playing sports, and I’m here to help.
Having run fourteen marathons, I know what it’s like to be competing, to have pressures of events looming, and the need to keep active and training, so as well as rehabilitating the injury, the priority in sports injury management is to keep people active and maintain their fitness, to minimise their time away from the sports field.
Taking part in sports, whether recreationally or on a more competitive level, can be hugely important to people mentally as a stress buster, getting some time to themselves away from the pressure from daily life. This is another reason to make sure that there is minimal disruption to your sporting calendar from your injury.
So, whatever your sporting level, let me help you with your injury, help you maintain your fitness and help you get back to sport.
What are the most common sports injuries?
What injuries do I see the most in my practice? There are two main types of injuries – trauma and overuse.
Trauma: Often from a direct blow, such as a tackle or fall, they can be just about anything – from a twisted ankle or a dead leg, to fractures, or major ligament injuries such as an anterior cruciate ligament on the knee, or a shoulder dislocation. Achilles tendon injuries usually occur just from pushing off with the foot and people can often say they hear a noise that sounds like they’ve been shot.
Overuse: This doesn’t necessarily mean ‘overtraining’ and I really don’t like the term ‘overuse’ on its own, because it is all relative to the sport and the level of the athlete. If you play a little recreational tennis, then a training a session that Andy Murray might do would be far too intense for your level but would be fine for him. Similarly, a training run of 10 miles would be fine for a distance runner with a lot of ‘mileage in their legs’ as the saying goes, but would be too much for a novice runner. So, the term ‘relative overuse’ is usually much better.
These type of problems tend to be tendon problems, like in the achilles, at the kneecap or the elbow resulting in conditions known as golfers or tennis elbow – even if you don’t play those sports!
Other issues can arise from the sporting environment. If the type of equipment you use is wrong for you, for example. Or if the surface you play on is different – harder more frozen pitches in the winter, maybe, or a new training run where the camber in the road is different.
Get in touch – Call / text: 07970 657041
Sports Injury Management
Treatment of sports injuries tends to be very different depending on the cause. An overuse injury will tend to recur after a period of rest if you don’t address the relative overuse. Similarly, if you have very tight hamstrings and haven’t used a stretching programme, the problem will return, as it will if you don’t address problems related to kit.
The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has more about sports injuries, management and prevention, here.
If you come to see me because of a sports injury, we will identify why the problem has occurred and can look at your kit, your technique – is your golf swing or kicking technique placing excessive strain on your body, for example – and your training schedule to get you back playing and to hopefully reduce the risk of the problem returning.
Get in touch so we can schedule an appointment!
Sports Centre, Trinity St David University, College Road, Carmarthen, SA31 3EP