Understanding, preventing and rehabilitating injuries

Injury on the sports field is a common occurrence.  FIFA, 20-20, Wimbledon, sports days in school, tennis courts are all common places for injuries.  Whenever we participate in sports and games, we can damage or hurt ourselves.  Some injuries are severe and some are not.  Some can be niggling injuries, some acute and others chronic.  Some injuries stop us from playing while others temporarily put us out of action.

The right place to start is to briefly understand what an injury is and what happens during injury, what our goals are in rehabilitating injury and how to help lower the incidence of injury on the sports field.

The incidence of acute sports injury is high especially in children and young adults, while the incidence of chronic injury is high in adults, especially those who participate in recreational sports.

Put play first

We tend to hook our kids to coaching camps as soon as they are able to walk and run. Gone are the days of playing in the gully, on the road, in the play ground or school ground or inside house compounds. Earlier generations of kids played marbles, tip-catch cricket, shuttle cock, hide and seek, kho-kho, kabaddi etc.  Each of these games made them less prone to the incidence of injury and helped them recover fast.

Perhaps one lesson to learn from this is to play more games before participating in sports.

 Australia, for many decades, has followed this principle of play-games-sports.  Their kids participate in variety of games — all fun and varied — aimed at developing the child’s anatomy, skeleton, skills and, most importantly, movement patterns.  As the child grows, he/she begins to show an inclination towards one particular type of movement pattern and sport, which is when he/she is systematically trained and coached.  This has been the backbone tactic of Australia’s strength in injury prevention and rehabilitation.

There’s maths in movement

Can we lower the incidence of injury or lower the likelihood of injury? If we understand what goes into a movement pattern, we can then begin to understand what goes wrong in a movement pattern. If we can understand what goes wrong in a movement, we can look at many ways of lowering the incidence of injury. 

Any movement follows a set pattern. There is a sequence of movements of joints and muscles. For example in golf, the golf swing is a highly precise and patterned movement sequence.  The upswing has many stages of movement patterns, so does the downswing.  In the downswing, the leg is what stabilises the posture. Then the hips turn first while the rest of the upper body is held tight and the club is behind the head.  As the hip turns and stabilises, the trunk now begins to rotate on a stable hip. As the trunk begins to stop and stabilise it allows for the arms to swing down. The process of rotation and stabilisation is critical in generating force, momentum, effective and efficient use of muscles and proper skill.

Like the golf swing, every sport or activity has a set of effective and efficient movement patterns. If our movement pattern is ineffective because we are not fit, or our skill levels are poor or we are playing beyond our muscular capacity or our movement patterns are not correct, then an injury is inevitable.

Tips to stay injury-free

Some of the simplest things one can do to lower their incidence rate of injury:

* Deconstruct a skill into smaller movement patterns and practise these smaller movement patterns on a daily basis.
* Put together chunks of smaller movement patterns and practise subsets of movement.
* Practise aim and precision movements first, especially when the body is fresh and muscles are not fatigued.
* Practise direction movements to improve muscle sequence.
*Put together movement patterns and practice rhythm.
*Rhythm has a great role in improving sequence and speed of movement execution.
*Practise strength training relevant to your sport and activity — functional fitness and strength is more important than generic strength.