Sports are an incredible way to learn how to be a team player, exercise, and support a healthy lifestyle. However, playing sports can sometimes lead to injuries. Prevention techniques like stretching, icing, and warming up are important preventative methods but do not always entirely prevent athletes from avoiding injuries. Did you know that basketball is the most common sport where players experience injuries?
Each year 2 million high school students are injured from sports and there is a total of 500,000 doctor’s visits regarding sports injuries. Understanding how sports injuries can occur, what treatment and recovery options are available, and the steps you can take to both alleviate pain and reduce the likelihood of future injuries is important.
Oftentimes, one of the biggest worries that an athlete faces when they suit up for the game is whether or not they’ll get injured. In the event that an injury does occur, there are some key things that every single athlete can do to ensure that they’re working to recover properly and reduce the likelihood of future sports injuries.
Since sports injuries can be common, here are a few steps to take should you happen to experience one.
A common misconception about sports injuries is that they are purely physical when it’s quite the opposite; sports injuries are both physical and mental. Following a sports injury, there are often times where the body and mind must undergo recovery. Recovering mentally from an injury might including positive thinking, speaking with a professional counselor, setting realistic goals, and visualizing a healthy version of yourself post-recovery.
One of the things that can happen after a sports injury is the loss of confidence in your body’s ability to perform certain movements and actions without the fear of failure or future injury. There are also mental challenges associated when an injury takes a long time to recover or there are setbacks during the recovery timeline. Recovering properly from a sports injury requires a focus on not only healing the body but healing the mind as well from some of the negative thoughts and emotions that can creep in.
Clinical and Sports Psychologist, Dan Pillow describes the mental injury components of sports injuries by saying, “It’s not uncommon for injuries to fuel feelings of isolation, frustration, anxiety, and even depression. Missing out on competition can affect your emotional well-being, social well-being, and your self-concept or identity.”
Athletes of all ages and experience levels can struggle with both mental and physical hurdles during the recovery process, which is why it’s important to make it a priority when you’re focusing on recovering after a sports injury. Part of making sure that you begin your treatment program and recovery after a sports injury properly is to take advantage of the all too common phrase R.I.C.E.
R.I.C.E. is a common acronym that is used with athletes who are experiencing muscle pain. It stands for rest, ice, compress, and elevation. These injury treatments all work together to reduce swelling and pain in the injured area. The helpful acronyum helps you understand what you need to do throughout your sports injury recovery process.
Rest is the most important and natural first line of defense when you experience an injury. Sleep is when your body takes time to repair itself and this is a crucial time during the recovery process to allow your body to heal. If you’ve recently had a sports injury, sleep is one of the most effective tools you can use to signal to your body that it’s time to begin the healing process. If you’ve been dealing with a sports injury for quite some time, that rest and sleep you desperately need can help spur on the healing that was delayed while you’re up and about or doing other things. A failure to get enough adequate sleep each night could turn that sports injury into a nagging injury that only gets worse with time.
After an injury, it’s important to ice the impacted area for 15-20 minutes for the 48 hours following an injury. Sports injuries are either acute and have an immediate onset from an impact or chronic where the injury can be long-lasting. According to a study, around 50 percent of all musculoskeletal injuries are soft tissue injuries during sports. If you are experiencing an acute sports injury, icing can help reduce swelling, muscle spasms, pain, and bleeding to the muscle tissues.
If the injury is a chronic one and is not swelling, using heat on the area can help stimulate blood flow to the area, release muscle tension, and helps to relax the muscles. It’s important to remember to ice when there is swelling, but make sure not to use heat if your injury is swollen.
Compression also helps to reduce swelling in the injured area, which in turn can lower pain levels by alleviating pressure on the area. Elevation is also used to reduce swelling by raising the injured area above the heart so the blood flow is lessened to the area and relieves pressure to the area until the swelling can ease a bit.
As you begin to work towards a successful recovery following a sports injury, it’s important to keep a few things in mind as you focus on recovering. One of the things that you need to be mindful of is that you should seek knowledge and guidance from qualified professionals. These qualified healthcare professionals including Physicians, licensed Physical Therapists, and others are essential in making sure that you’re aware of your unique injury and are on a treatment program that is designed to help you get back to doing the things you love most.
One of the things that can really set back an athlete during their recovery process is by thinking they can do it all on their own or that they know how to effectively recover without guidance. Mistakes often happen with this mindset, and all it takes is one misstep to accidentally make your sports injury even worse. If you find that you’ve sustained a sports injury, one of the first things you should do is seek the guidance of a qualified healthcare professional.
Getting help and support with the guidance of qualified professionals is an essential step to making sure that you can recover properly, and they can also provide insight and support when you need it most on those difficult recovery days.
Working with a qualified healthcare professional will also be useful during your sports injury recovery because it will give you an opportunity to learn more about the injury itself. In some cases, what might seem like a small issue could be a sign of something deeper. Understanding what the injury is could also help you identify what might have caused the injury and help you figure out how to prevent it in the future.
In addition, connecting with a qualified healthcare professional like a licensed Physical Therapist can be a great way to understand the potential recovery timelines and treatment options available to you to maximize your recovery.
Once you understand all of your treatment options and begin the recovery process, the next step of focusing on your recovery is to mentally prepare yourself. Whether you’ve gone through a sports injury in the past or it’s your first time, it’s important to remain optimistic throughout the process. Just like with everything in life, there will be days where some tasks are more challenging than others. It’s important to keep everything in perspective and work toward incremental progress each day. You’ll find that by staying optimistic and working towards incremental goals, you’ll be able to take your sports injury recovery one day at a time.
The next key to focusing on your recovery from a sports injury is to remember that your recovery should always center around listening to your body. Before you go jumping back into your normal routine or attempting to do all that you could before, it’s important to take it slow and ease your way back into things. This means that you should work to build up endurance, strength, mobility, and range of motion over time. When you work with a licensed Physical Therapist at Results Physiotherapy, your physical therapist will work with you to implement a treatment and recovery program that is designed to help you reach your goals and track your progress along the way.
By tracking your progress with one of our licensed Physical Therapists, you will also find tha tit motivates you to keep going when things get tough like we’ve outlined above. If at any point you feel like you’re experiencing pain or discomfort while doing certain exercises or stretches, you need to take a step back and slow it down a bit. When you’re recovering from a previous sports injury, your body might not be used to performing certain movements or actions again, and it could take some time to readjust.
That’s why you want to take it slow and work to build that strength and endurance over time to not only alleviate pain but to restore function and work to prevent future injuries. The next thing that you should focus on when you’re working to recover from a sports injury is to set realistic and attainable goals. In addition to working with a licensed Physical Therapist who can help you set and work to reach those goals, you can set attainable goals and view them as another challenge to strive to meet while recovering.
For instance, you can set treatment goals like going to your weekly physical therapy appointment or doing each one of your physical therapy homework each night. In addition to the personal goals you set for yourself, your licensed Physical Therapist will work with you at Results to set goals you can work to achieve each step along the way during your treatment program.
If you experienced an injury more serious than a soft tissue injury, physical therapy is a great line of defense so you can keep your body strong, flexible, and mobile. Your physical therapist can provide you with a detailed assessment of your range of motion and physical capabilities and create a personalized treatment plan to prevent future injuries. Physical therapy is especially important to athletes who are looking to remain in shape and flexible while recovering so there is no momentum lost in their bodies before returning to their sport.
