Understand Sports Injury Basics to Get Effective Sports Injury Treatment

With football season in full swing, and basketball season on the horizon, we thought taking a look at sports injury basics can help our student team athletes, and parents of our team sport athletes, to avoid sports injuries. By understanding sports injuries we can treat them more effectively when they happen.  And injuries don't just occur in sports. These injury basics can relate to injuries happening in our daily lives just as well. In treating all injuries there is a direct connection to four very specific “ingredients” that we call a recipe for injury.  Lets take a look at the specific ingredients that occur with a sports injury (and injuries in general):

1. The Role of Gravity in Sports Injuries

It may sound basic, but gravity plays a huge role in sports injuries. Think of any injury you've suffered and imagine the same thing happening in a zero-gravity environment - it probably wouldn't. Gravity keeps us on the earth and also also causes joint compression - not to mention falls. We can’t control gravity so we need to make sure that we can move through it, live with it and build strength so it does not negatively affect us.

2. End Range of Motion Contributing to Sports Injuries

Our joints and muscles are designed to move through a wide range of end range of motion, especially athletes. Athletes excel because they are able to move their body and joints through extreme ranges of motion quickly and efficiently, so if we are not training our bodies in these extreme full range of motions, it can cause a detriment when athletes try to when they are on the court or field.

3. Transverse Plane and Sports Injuries

We are 3-dimensional beings. We function in 3 planes. The transverse plane is a fancy way of saying twisting or rotation. Most injuries have some kind of rotational component to them, whether that's a hamstring pull, an ACL tear, shoulder tear or back pain. Therefore it is important that all of our patients have some kind of rotational component to their exercises so that we can control it in a safe setting, like our clinic, so that when you get out into the real world, your body will know how to control it efficiently and avoid injuries.

4. Neuromuscular Inhibition: Keeping Your Muscles "Activated"

The last ingredient and where we as physical therapist, your musculoskeletal specialist, come into play. Every muscle you have has to be stimulated by a nerve. So in order for a muscle to work correctly, there has to be a connection between the nerve and muscle. If the nerve does not properly stimulate the muscle, then the muscle will either not contract on time or not contract with enough force on time when you need it to. If this happens then your joints become unstable and it will negatively impact on your ability to control movement. You might not feel it right away, but you will begin to compensate which will lead to joint dysfunction and ultimately an injury, right away or chronically over time. So if your joints reach the end range of motion, with a rotational component, gravity is applying pressure and your muscles can't stabilize your joints, an acute injury can occur or your joints will begin to break down over time which will ultimately lead to an injury at some point.

At Breaking Through, our physical therapists use the One80 System to assess and treat sports injuries, and all injuries, because it is the most effective method, the ONLY physical therapy method, of reversing neuromuscular inhibition.  Many other health specialists (chiropractors, massage therapists and other more conventional physical therapists) can actually cause neuromuscular inhibition (turning off the muscles, or making them relax) with ineffective injury treatments like stretching, foam rolling, thera-gun, and massage. At Breaking Through, our physical therapists replace these things with active and dynamic warm ups, isometric exercises for your muscles, barefoot walking and functional movement exercises to reverse neuromuscular inhibition and improve your pain in as little as 2-3 visits.

(Read: Is Stretching Bad for You? Why Stretching is NOT Your Friend.)

In this video, Dr. Josh explains how our bodies communicate with us by generating pain and how physical therapy sessions at Breaking Through are designed to restore your function, while decreasing your pain in less sessions and with long-lasting results. Contact the Physical Therapists at Breaking Through IT for a free consult, or schedule your initial assessment today and be on your way to sports injury rehabilitation or  a pain free active lifestyle.