Many outstanding players exhaust their sports careers prematurely due to injuries that are not very serious, but in fact they are not well managed due to lack of basic knowledge and awareness of conditioning methodologies and timely and effective management of sports injuries.
Most of the people participate in sports to attain physical fitness, which is an amateurish approach towards sport and games. Those interested in professional sports should learn the value of proper conditioning before taking up the concerned sport seriously. Functional conditioning in sports consists of exercises that incorporate balance, flexibility, stability, acceleration, and deceleration. In essence, functional conditioning trains movements rather than isolated muscles. The specific exercises that help condition of the body must meet the following four criteria.
First of all it should include frontal and transverse movements. Secondly it should properly condition the body’s nerves and muscles to develop "muscle memory" and help make movements "automatic". Third, it should prepare the body to respond to external forces such as gravity and momentum. And lastly it is important that the exercise should build the bio-motor ability of an athlete to develop his or her flexibility, strength, power, endurance, agility and coordination. In our culture, most of the sportsmen start playing games without proper conditioning, as they believe that they would achieve fitness and conditioning through participation and playing the sports automatically, this is a fallacy.
If the athlete is not properly conditioned, it is likely that he or she will break down or get injured under stress and would not be able to give a 100% in spite of being talented. In order to get superior conditioning it is not necessary to visit state of art gymnasiums, but it is the correct use of basic exercise equipment and techniques that gives an athlete superior conditioning and fitness required for optimal performance in the concerned sport.
In order to develop strength and stability of shoulders, hips and core and to improve the activation and elongation of muscles, physioball exercise is a must which is usually missing in the inventory of our expensive gyms. Exercise with physioball improves nervous system response to movement and stimulates the muscular, skeletal, and nervous systems. It also improves balance, coordination, flexibility, stability and strength necessary for playing any professional sport.
Along with physioball the second most important is the correct use of stretch shortening cycle, as it improves both muscular and neuropsychological mechanism. Training this feature stimulates changes in the neuromuscular system by enhancing the ability of the nervous system to recruit muscle groups and to respond to both slight and rapid changes in muscle length more quickly and powerfully. Training of muscles in this fashion increases the power of movements, using the muscles and tendons elastic elements in addition to stretch reflex. Stretch shortening cycle includes jumping drills, single leg squats, standing bench press, high hurdle jumps and clapping in the air while performing push ups.
If athletes concentrate at their flexibility, coordination, plyometric and activation training using skipping rope, physioball, stretching, jumping and jogging exercises, eat nutritiously, take carbohydrates, necessary vitamins specially Vitamin C, antioxidants like spinach and broccoli, fats with more omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acid, use of bananas during training to recover quickly from fatigue and to compensate loss of potassium and pre-hydrate at least two hours before exercise with 500 to 600 milliliters of fluid, there is no reason why they are not well prepared to take on the grueling sport season ahead.
In spite of proper conditioning, injuries are part of sport. Different types of injuries occurs to bones, ligaments, joints, tendons, muscles and other parts of the body while participating in contact and non contact sports. Treatment of injuries is a specialised area that should be left to a qualified physiologist or a doctor who is trained in the area of sport medicine; however the coach, trainer and athlete should be educated about the nature and initial treatment of sport injuries for the early and better rehabilitation of the players.
PRICE is the acronym for the principles by which injury is initially managed. The first letter in PRICE stands for protection. The word R in PRICE indicates the importance of rest, where as I is for the application of ice that must be applied to effected area as soon as possible with exception to the injuries of scrotum or testicular injury of males that occurs due to direct contact of hard objects like cricket or baseball or direct body blows, where hot wet towels are applied so that blood clotting in the area of impact can be reduced or avoided.
The last letter of PRICE is E which means that the injured limb should be elevated above the level of heart to allow gravity to reduce swelling by returning fluids towards the heart.
Along with PRICE the principle of HARM should also be kept in mind by the player that consists of factors which are harmful if ignored in initial treatment and recovery.
H of harm is for heat treatment, which if used early can increase internal bleeding and swelling. A is for alcohol that leads to inappropriate postponement of treatment. The R of harm is to indicate that running of any form should be avoided at least for 72 hours after injury unless a medical professional says otherwise. Lastly it is the vital M for massage which is applied extensively in our orthodox way of treatment that may cause bleeding and swelling. There are different types of sport massages but the deep nerve massage has to be avoided for 72 hours at all cost.
Taking a few examples of the common sport injuries, Rotator cuff tear is a common shoulder injury in the athletes of over 40 years who have a long history of involvement in repetitive overhead sports such as swimming, volleyball or throwing sport including cricket.
Athletes also suffer from tennis elbow but mostly fail to distinguish between the tennis and golfers elbow injury. The golfer’s elbow can occur due to poor swing mechanics and it occurs mostly in the trailing or dominant elbow. The player usually complains about the pain along the inner side of elbow and pain worsens with wrist flexion and pronation.
The tennis elbow on the other hand is a common sports malady that effects more than just tennis pros and weekend tennis warriors. Tennis elbow or lateral epicondylitis occurs as a result of repetitive twisting and torquing of the forearm and elbow from activities such as tennis, golf, squash and cricket ball throwing.
Wrist sprains, wrist tendinitis and fractures to the area of hands are also common but a very common injury to the finger is called mallet finger, when it is struck at the tip and the phalanx at the fingertip is forced down. This commonly happens in sports as basketball or volleyball.
Knee is another highly suspected area of injuries amongst the professional players. Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITB) frequently occurs in cyclist and runners, whereas meniscal tear is a common cause of locked knee amongst players when they cross 50 years of age. Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear (ACL) is also common in the players who play pivoting and cutting sports like football and basketball, whereas Posterior Cruciate Ligament Tear (PCL) is more common amongst the athlete who participate contact sports such as rugby or American football.
Most of athletes specially cricketers, distance runners, tennis players and field hockey players suffer from hamstring strain which is infect the tearing of muscle fibre. Although a complete tear can occur, most tears are partial. Poor running mechanics in which the athlete has excess forward lean causes it primarily. This results in over-striding, increasing the hamstring length and making strain more likely.
Pakistan has an acute shortage of sport medicine experts. Like any good sport psychologist it is also difficult to find a good sports medicine doctor or physio. The rarity of this commodity has given way too many quakes and self presumed experts in this field to flex their muscles and are making bucks and playing havoc with the future of budding, talented and professional players.
It is therefore imperative upon the sports boards and federations to acquire services of professional sports medicine experts and establish biomechanics labs in each province along with the education of athletes about sports conditioning and management of sports injuries, so that the performance of players can be made trouble free and the valuable playing life of athletes can be enhanced manifold.
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