Sports Injury Rehabilitation

Whether you love to play baseball, go for a walk through the park, or ride your bike, many of us are active in some type of sports activity. Sports injuries are common. Whether you suffer a minor or major injury, rehabilitation is a critical part of recovery.

A large part of rehab actually involves controlled exercises. In fact it’s critical to completely healing an injury. Even when therapy is over you will need to continue doing strengthening exercises. Most modern rehab programs include exercise regimes right from the beginning.

By strengthening the area that has been injured you are working to build the muscle groups so that they original injury does not reoccur. For example if you’ve suffered a knee injury, you will need to build the muscles around the knee area. By strengthening these muscles you work to prevent a reoccurrence of the initial injury.

Because strengthening exercises are so important to rehabilitation it is critical that trainers and coaches are involved in the entire rehab program. If an athlete is sent back to the field too soon they will land up with a reoccurring injury.

There are several steps that should be followed when an injury occurs. The first of course is first aid. RICE is the standard protocol for strains and sprain. R is for Rest the injured area, I is for Ice the injury, C is for Compress the injured area with strapping, and E is for elevate the injured limb. The RICE protocol helps relive pain and control swelling and inflammation. The quicker RICE is initiated the faster the healing time will be.

For more serious injuries such as breaks or bone fractures, the athlete needs to be stabilized and then transported to the nearest emergency ward at the hospital. There they will x-ray and cast the broken limb.

For reoccurring or chronic injuries such as tennis elbow, these are usually a result of overload to the joint. The trainer should immediately respond with RICE and stop training to prevent further damage.

An accurate diagnosis is always important even for sprains and strains. It is important that you see a sports injury specialist as too often regular GP’s provide inadequate treatments or wrong diagnosis. Use your GP for a referral. You should also get a referral to a physiotherapist that specializes in sports injuries. The sooner physio starts the better.

The sports injury physiotherapist will plan the appropriate rehab program. Generally it starts with reducing pain and working to promote healing. Once the swelling has reduced and the pain subsided treatment will begin to involve exercises to target specific goals. Usually exercises begin with mobility exercises, then moving to flexibility exercises, and finally to strengthening exercises.

At some point the physiotherapist will indicated that you are ready to return to normal training. It is critical at this point that there is communication between the physiotherapist, coach and yourself. Training too hard too soon will result in re-injury. In fact it’s the number one reason for reoccurrence of injuries.

Part of returning to training must include exercises that are specific the your sport and regaining full function of the area. It is important that there is coordination established between joint position and balance.

Once rehab reaches the final stage it’s time for the athlete to begin to work the injured area so that it is fully functional in the job it must do. Many times athletes return to their sport to find the previously injured area not fully cooperative. The trick is to start slow and slowly increase length and intensity until the joint or injured area is once again performing optimally. This can take time and rushing will only cause a re-injury.

Sports rehabilitation of an injury draws a fine line between two little and too much. Too little will result in little improvement. Too much will result in re-injury. Following your physiotherapist’s directions closely is your best chance of returning to the game quickly.


Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.