Avoid Sports Injuries

According to Dr. Frank S. Chen of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, a group of sports doctors who specialize in fitness training and sports medicine in the Bay Area, while not all sports injuries can be avoided by athletes while exercising, taking proper precautions will help prevent most of these sports injuries. Aside from sudden twists and sprains, sports injuries can occur over time when microtears can become worse and worse over time. With proper procedures that are done each and every time an athlete exercises or trains, sports injuries are likely to never occur, or damage will be minimized.

1. Proper use of conditioning recommended by doctors:

Conditioning such as aerobic conditioning involves increasing your heart rate for an elongated amount of time, such as on a treadmill or exercise bike. Almost all doctors agree that it is very important that you use conditioning if you are an athlete involved with such sports as football and cycling. Dr. Frank Chen says that “playing yourself” into shape (performing on the field without strengthening specific muscles in your body) will almost always lead to injury.

The initial conditioning should be something that is light, such as running in place or jumping rope. According to many doctors, doing light conditioning first will help prevent sports injuries later when you perform stretches and exercises. After the initial warm up, doctors recommend light stretching that can be used before getting into heavier stretching. Make sure that your muscles are warmed up properly before increasing physical exertion. Doctors urge that if you are, for example, cycling or running, you may want to start out at a very slow pace before graduating moving faster and faster.

2. Doctors recommend stretching before exercise:

As stated above, the best way to avoid sports injuries is to stretch effectively. After your muscles have been warmed up as described above, it is important to stretch. According to doctors, stretching should involve the targeting of certain muscles, and then slowly stretch them until you feel some tension (not pain) and then slowly release back into a normal position. Stretching before and after exercise while your muscles are still warmed up will help microtears in tissue to heal faster and effectively and it will help avoid sports injuries in the future.

3. Avoiding over-training and training errors prevents sports injuries:

Doctors maintain that while soreness after working out his quite common, if soreness continues for athletes that train many days consecutively, then you are probably over-working yourself. Doctors believe that you do not have to over-train to make progression in your exercise.

Recovery is also important for muscles after an intense workout. Doctors agree that twenty-four to forty-eight hours is needed for muscles to recover to their full capacity again. Make sure that you schedule a steady balance of training and rest. You do not need to increase intensity every time you workout; this could effectively prevent sports injuries in the future.

Sports Doctor

A sports doctor is a highly trained doctor who works with sports teams and athletes or consults temporarily with athletes to treat injuries relating to sports. A sports doctor also helps athletes prevent injuries and keep their health at peak performance. A sports doctor is trained to not only treat the injury in the best way possible, but also the best way to get the athlete back on the field and active again. The job of doctors working in sports is to make challenging decisions and carry out tasks that balance a rapid recovery and an effective recovery.

Although a sports doctor is highly specialized, their duties may differ from day to day. One day, they are giving guidelines to an athlete about what to eat and how much to eat to ensure proper nutrition; the next day, the sports doctor is performing critical surgeries. However, this general notion may differ for teams in sports that require a lot of medical attention from doctors. Football teams have a large team of sports doctors that perform only certain specialized tasks.

1. Examination and assessment:

A sports doctor will usually be required to give general checkups to athletes, not only to diagnosis a health ailment or illness, but also to identify any injuries that are slowly beginning to show in the athlete. A sports doctor may ask him or her questions about anything that may be bothering them, such as a pain or discomfort. A sports doctor will recognize whether or not it will go away on its own or if it should receive attention. Sometimes, pains and discomforts can lead to a slowly developed injury.

A sports doctor then has the task to diagnose an injury that occurs suddenly on the field and to take steps in treating it properly. The doctor will then make a decision of whether or not to clear the athlete to continue playing or training.

2. Importance of skills in team doctors:

A sports doctor works hard to repair broken bones, torn ligaments, and strained muscles. Since a lot of big market sports deal with multi-million dollar athletes to play for their teams, it is highly critical to have a capable and highly trained team of doctors. The difference between a good doctor and a great one can cost a sports team millions of dollars. This makes this field highly competitive and rare to get into. Only the best doctors can become a team doctor in a big market sport.

3. Rehabilitation and recovery:

After an injury is treated, doctors working for teams need to spend a good portion of their time helping a recently-injured athlete get back on the field. If an athlete has a broken leg, he or she will need extensive help from doctors even after it heals to regain strength in the leg muscles. They may even need assistance when running again after leaving crutches.

4. Injury interpretation from team doctors:

Doctors will look at X-rays of broken bones and torn ligaments and make a diagnoses of the injury. Sometimes, these diagnoses can be left up to interpretation and an unskilled sports doctor may make a wrong choice. This will effect the recovery of the athlete and delay it. Doctors should be skilled enough to make a good diagnoses and get the athlete back on the field as soon as possible.