Sports can be a great means to keep fit, develop confidence, and meet new friends.
Whether you’re a world-class professional athlete or a casual weekend warrior, odds are at some point in time you’ve suffered an injury. Approximately 70% of active individual players experience some type of aches, pains, or discomfort in their joints and muscles during the course of a game. If you participate in any kind of sport regularly, it’s very possible that you could end up hurting yourself during your athletic activity.
When we perform repetitive movements or activities, our muscles can end up with overuse injuries.
In time, these microtrauma injuries can lead to muscle tightness and/or tendinitis. An injury will prevent you from playing your best-loved sport, keep you from the courts or turf for a prolonged period of time, or result in long-term effects such as chronic pain or diminished range of motion. Additionally, if left with no treatment, these injuries can likewise develop into something more severe in the future.
The upside is that a sports injury doesn’t need to keep you off the field or court for long. Physiotherapy can help treat sports-related injuries and prevent them from becoming chronic, and even help with future injury prevention. Here are six ways physiotherapy may help heal your sports injury quickly:
#1: Build Up Your Existing Muscles
You have probably heard this one before. Every movement you carry out in your sport (such as tossing a baseball, running a race, or diving in swimming) needs a specific amount of strength in the muscles you use. In the case of throwing a ball, that means the muscles in your shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand.
Over time though, these muscles can become imbalanced and weak. This problem can develop as we get older and our bodies shed muscle mass. It can also occur if you’ve been playing a sport for a long period of time without giving your muscles a chance to rest and recuperate in between bouts of activity.
Thankfully, you can prevent injuries and enhance your effectiveness on the field with the strengthening exercises your physiotherapist can show you. Moreover, strengthening your existing muscles can help to resolve the discomfort, stiffness and swelling that come with any sports injury.
#2: Get Rid Of Tendonitis and Tension
The tissue in your joints is subject to swelling and injury as a result of the continual movement of your joints. However, if your inflammation is triggered by a small tear in the tendon, then physiotherapy can help relieve your tendonitis.
Tendinitis is an inflammatory ailment that can build up in your tendons when they end up being inflamed and painful. Certain activities, such as running or jumping, basketball and tennis are particularly likely to cause it. If you suffer from tendonitis or muscle strains, physiotherapy can relieve your injury quicker. It can also really help you prevent a strain injury from happening later on.
#3: Cultivate New Movement and Conditioning Exercises
As you grow older, your muscles and joints usually end up being less flexible. This could be due to genetic makeup, injury, or a lack of regular physical exercise.
In addition, if you’ve been playing a sport for a long time, you might have suffered structural imbalances that cause you to be more susceptible to injury.
If you want to avoid injury and increase your agility, you want to make an effort to cultivate new movement and strengthening exercises. Your physical therapist can teach you the best workouts to increase your overall flexibility and revitalize joint performance.
Doing so can help to heal an injury, minimize your danger of injury, improve your mobility, and increase your total range of motion.
#4: Improve Your Range of Movement
When you’re injured, you often have to modify your activities. Because of this, you risk suffering discomfort, tightness, and loss of flexibility. Luckily, as you recuperate, your joints and muscles can regain their range of movement.
This process can take place quickly, but it typically takes about two weeks for your muscles to recover.
To prevent injury and accelerate the recovery process, physiotherapy can apply treatments and exercises that enhance your range of mobility. Doing so may ease pain, increase your flexibility, and help you get back to your typical activities sooner.
#5: Decrease Swelling and Stiffness
As you heal from an injury and your muscles get stronger, you may form a build-up of scar tissue. This is a normal part of the healing cycle and can help to reduce the chances of future injuries. In fact, it can really help you return to your typical activities much more quickly. To decrease your danger of suffering from tightness, physiotherapy will help you preserve your mobility and agility, even though you’re not exercising.
#6: Prevent Repetitive Strain Injuries
A recurring strain injury occurs when a previously small injury comes to be exacerbated as you go back to a more intense level of activity. For instance, if you’ve been playing basketball for a few weeks and you try to jump higher than you usually do, you might end up reinjuring your ankle.
Recurring strain injuries can happen in any sport when the typical level of activity is increased, but they’re most common in sports that include repeated movement, such as weightlifting, baseball, soccer, football, and basketball. Physiotherapy can alleviate stress injuries by re-aligning muscles and connective tissues, massaging out knots or pain points and increasing the blood flow to the affected area of your body.
Summary
Physiotherapy can help treat many sports injuries, including sprains, pressures, tension fractures, tendonitis, joint pain, and joint dislocation. In many cases, you may even be able to protect against injuries from taking place to begin with. If you want to defend against injuries and increase your effectiveness on the field or court, you ought to try physiotherapy.
Physiotherapy starts with a personalized treatment plan that will help you build up your existing muscles, treat your tendonitis and strain, develop new motion and strengthening workouts, improve your range of movement, reduce inflammation and stiffness, prevent repetitive strain injuries, and minimize reinjuries.
Give our expert team at Strive Physiotherapy a call and let us help you recover from your sports injury and improve your quality of life. Call today!