How Physiotherapy Helps You Recover From Sports Injuries?
Sports injuries can force athletes to quit playing their favorite sports. Injuries are mostly prevalent in organized sports, especially when athletes undergo intensive training programs. Examples of athletes getting heavily injured during practice sessions can be extremely heartbreaking, given that they may have faced an injury while preparing themselves for big games ahead of the season.
Fortunately, science is equipped enough to help these injured athletes recover well. Physiotherapy treatment is an important remedy for recovering from career-threatening injuries. Let’s discuss more on the topic.
What are Sports Injuries?
Injuries that occur while engaging in specific sports-related events such as exercise can be termed as a sports injury. More common forms of sports injuries occur during live games, such as that in football. A heavy tackle might look ordinary on TV sets, but in reality, it can even dislocate one’s bones.
Types of Sports Injuries
Sports injuries can be as simple as bruises, cuts, muscle strains, and so on. More complicated situations arise when such injuries lead to muscle tears and broken bones. Human bodies consist of several soft tissues such as muscles, ligaments, fascia, tendons, and bursae. These body parts may get affected depending on the level of injury suffered. Here are the various types of sports injuries:
- When a particular muscle is stressed because of sporting activities, it’s termed as ‘pulled muscle.’ This is among the most common forms of sports injuries that athletes suffer from. Symptoms of such an injury include pain, weakness, swelling, and difficulty with muscle movements.
- Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL) is responsible for connecting the femur (upper leg bone with the tibia (larger bone of the lower leg). It’s situated on the inner side of the knee. The MCL is generally injured because of wrong movements or forceful impact. It often occurs if the athlete receives a direct blow on his knee.
- Another type of injury is the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), which is a serious condition.
- Among the other type of injuries that an athlete can experience are tennis elbow, knee injuries, sprains, bone dislocations, strained hamstring, and shin splints.
What is Sports Physiotherapy and its benefits?
Sports physiotherapy includes specific sport-related knowledge, which is applied for the treatment of associated injuries. This particular field of physiotherapy ensures that adequate safety measures are taken by athletes. Numerous benefits await those who adopt physiotherapy treatment procedures. Some of them are:
- Sports physiotherapists can guide you through your recovery process, irrespective of whether you are an athlete by hobby or profession.
- Over the years, it has been proven that adhering to the instructions provided by sports physiotherapists, helps athletes with quick recovery.
- There are many more benefits of implementing sports physiotherapy in your recovery process. An expert physiotherapist will help you boost your on-field performance by enhancing your flexibility.
Types of Physiotherapy Treatments
Similar to other fitness conditioning treatments, sports physiotherapy, too, can be performed in numerous ways. A professional physiotherapist can help you recover by adopting any of the below-mentioned procedures, depending on the intensity of your injury and your overall fitness levels.
Range of Motion Exercises
Range of Motion or ROM exercises helps with reducing stiffness in muscles and joints. These exercises must be focused on a specific body part, which is injured. There are two kinds of ROM exercises:
- Active
- Passive
The intensity of your injury will decide which form of ROM exercise you must adopt.
- Active ROM involves exercises that you can perform without any external guidance from your physiotherapist.
- In contrast, Passive ROM involves exercises that are carried out by physiotherapists without the need for any movement from the patient’s side.
Strengthening Exercises
Injuries can often weaken your muscles. Sports physiotherapists use a set of exercises combined with special therapies for muscle strengthening. These exercises can be either static or dynamic. The overall aim of such exercises is to improve your weak muscles.
Core Strengthening & Stability
Your body’s core resembles the foundation of a building. Stronger the foundation, the lesser are the chances of an acute injury. Core strengthening exercises, like pilates, strengthen your back and pelvic muscles; it also enhances stability.
Ice & Heat Application
Applying ice to the injured area is the primary healing step. Ice prevents your injured muscle from swelling excessively.
If your injury lasts more than 3 months, physiotherapists may prefer using hot packs for preventing pain and muscle stiffness.
Ultrasound
Ultrasound treatments involve the usage of high-frequency sound waves for the stimulation of deep tissues inside your body. Such treatments can help in warming up your tissues by improving blood circulation.
Electrical Simulation
Passing electrical current to the injured area is referred to as Electric Stimulation. Electrical Stimulation ensures increased blood flow to the affected area, which results in minimized pain among patients.
Poor training methods and inadequate warm-up sessions, along with a lack of proper conditioning, can lead to injuries. So, stay safe to stay fit!
