Blog post produced and written by Clinic Manager and Sports Injury Specialist Jason Dodd.
This week the government announced that we are to begin lifting restrictions on social distancing and also sports participation. This is great news for all of those who love team sports or who enjoy organised sports that can only be played when certain facilities are available (ie, tennis). But, with this good news usually comes bad news! And this time we mean from an injury perspective.
We have seen it many times over. The start of the football season, for example, sees a hige spike in workload/stress on the body which can result in injury. The way we try to explain it is that each and every one of us have what we like to call ‘a tipping point’. This is the point where we edge just over what our body can tolerate and it gives us a signal that it is too much by creating, usually, a painful response such as stiffness, tightness or even a muscle strain.
Now these changes listed here are where we should listen to our bodies. Unfortunately, we don’t always ‘accept’ these signals and try and ‘work through’ the pain, thinking in our heads that it will eventually go. In some cases it does, but we always need to remember in these circumstances ‘to what extent have I managed to adapt here’? Usually, any strain or injury is repaired with collagen fibres. If these collagen fibres heal poorly we have what is called ‘scar tissue’ form on the muscle. The same way a scar forms on the skin when we break it, we get the same thing on our muscles. The important thing to note here is that, just like the scars on our skin, these healed wounds are never as strong or as efficient as our healthy cells. This makes them more likely to create a problem further down the line. This is when a minor injury becomes a chronic injury.
However, there are many things that you can do to prevent these things from happening. The first and foremost is to simply, take care of your body. This means having a good diet, good rest and recovery through sleep and general relaxing and also taking part in regular exercise which is within your capacity. For those seeking a return to their regular sporting habits when restrictions are eased further, there are many sport specific programmes which can be followed to help reduce the chances of injury and prepare you for the activity ahead. The FIFA 11+ programme is just one such programme and is readily available on the internet for free. This has been proven in numerous studies to reduce the chance of football injuries by up to 50%! There are of course other ones too for other sports but this is just an example of one.
This regular intervention can feel like its time consuming but there is a famous saying in the medical world which goes ‘if you can’t make time for your wellness now then you’ll have to make time for your illness later’.
We hugely believe in prevention rather than cure so please, please, please make sure you return to sport safely and if you need any advice on anything then please feel free to reach out to us and contact us with any questions.
