Sports injuries usually occur when there is an overload of the musculoskeletal structures that exceeds the ability of regeneration or adaptation. Epidemiological studies conducted at international competitions and Olympic Games found that the rate of injury in athletes varies from 10% to 65% and that most of these injuries affect the lower limbs.
S.T.O.P(Stop Trauma Overuse Prevention)
Sporting activities are a major cause of injury in adolescent individuals. These injuries are associated with costly medical expenses, result in sports dropout, decrease sport performance at the team/individual level and increase the risk of developing a future sporting injury. For adolescent athletes aiming to advance to elite senior competition, some injuries can also represent a serious threat to their career.
The avoidance of sports injuries is the main goal pursued by all professionals involved in sports. An important role for the sports physiotherapist to minimize activity-related injury, that is, to improve the benefit: risk ratio associated with physical activity and sport.
That is with identifying the problem, understand mechanism of injury, implementing treatment strategy and injury preventing and re assessment.
“Most common sports injuries are not under your control, but most of the times sports injuries are preventable”.
Preventive measures for the risk factors are following:
Intrinsic injury prevention strategies
Warm-up
Stretching
Appropriate training
Adequate recovery
Psychology.
Nutrition.
2. Extrinsic injury prevention strategies
Taping and bracing
Protective equipment.
Suitable equipment.
Appropriate surfaces.
Warm-up: Prepares the body for exercise. The most effective warm-up consists of both general and specific exercises.
2. Stretching: The ability to move a joint smoothly throughout a full range of movement is considered an important component of good health. Although increased flexibility attained through stretching was widely believed to decrease musculotendinous injuries, and minimize and alleviate muscle soreness, and perhaps even improve performance.
3. Taping and bracing: Taping (or strapping) and bracing are used to restrict undesired, potentially harmful motion and allow desired motion. used in the injury management of conditions in numerous joints.
4. Protective equipment: designed to shield various parts of the body against injury without interfering with sporting activity.
5. Psychology : Excessive psychological arousal can not only impair sporting performance but is also likely to increase the risk of injury. Overarousal is associated with impairment of natural technique, which players describe as a ‘loss of rhythm’. Loss of concentration can also predispose to injury by giving the athlete less time to react to cues. This is clearly a risk in contact and collision sports but can also cause injury in non-contact sports.
6. Nutrition : Hydration is thought to influence the amount and composition of joint fluid, which helps to nourish articular cartilage. Inadequate glycogen repletion causes a reliance on fat and protein stores and this may result in increased protein breakdown, which, in turn, may lead to soft tissue injury.