Unfortunately, sports and injuries all too often go hand in hand. Sometimes the injury is down to the actions of others, and sometimes the injury could be caused by faulty equipment – check out a personal injury lawyer (based in Richardson) if you have been affected. However, sometimes a sports injury can be linked to causes with relatively quick-fixes. Today, we’re going to check out some of those fixes.
Wear the recommended protective gear
How many sports can you think of that require the participants to wear protective gear? Three, maybe? Four? You can probably get to ten without trying very hard (and even more than that with a pencil and paper). The reasons behind this protective gear are usually evidence based. Soccer players, for example, play a sport that is, for the most part, played at ground level with the feet, wherein the players try to either kick the ball whilst avoiding tackles from the opposing team, or indeed the player is on the team without the ball and therefore must endeavour to recover the ball using their feet. This means a lot of people standing close to one another, kicking their feet out. That’s why soccer players often wear shin pads, to help prevent injury.
Forgoing the protective gear in any sport is not recommended – the protection wouldn’t be there if it did not serve some useful purpose.
Remember to take rest days
The human body is a big squishy bag of soft tissue and strong but brittle bones. It can only take so much ‘impact’ before the individual starts to feel the wear and tear of common injuries such as muscle strain and joint pain. The basics of rest days involve taking at least one rest day per week, and some sources even recommended taking a whole month off per year away from sports, allowing the body ample time to right any ongoing wrongs that may have been unable to heal due to lack of recuperation time.
Proper warms ups & proper technique
Warm ups can cause conflicting viewpoints. While some people prefer to go through what can only be described as a full workout to ‘loosen up’ before sports, others will tell you that no lion or tiger has ever been spotted stretching out their calves before an explosive sprint. The thing to remember is that where muscles are cold, they will not be as supple as they could be if the blood supply were increased. Cold muscles can be tense and can tear if too much exertion is expected over too long a time frame. Always ensure that muscles are ready for sport.
Stop if you feel pain
Pain is the human body’s version of a car’s check engine light. As we all know, failure to check our engines when the dashboard lights up to tell us something is wrong is the fastest way to ensure that what is currently a small issue will soon become a bigger issue. The same is true of the body and pain. Stop if you feel pain and get it checked out.
