Injuries

Joint injuries
If you follow a sports team you will know how often players may get injured. It is an occupational hazard. Joints are tough and well designed, but there is a limit to the force they can withstand. Common injuries include sprains, dislocations, torn ligaments, and torn tendons.

Football is particularly hazardous. There are lots of stops, starts, and changes of direction, and perhaps some bad tackles. It is not just professional footballers who suffer – 40% of knee injuries happen to under-15 footballers.

Sprains
The most common sporting injury is a sprain. This usually happens when you overstretch a ligament by twisting your ankle or knee. Often people will say that they have ‘torn a muscle’, when they have actually sprained a ligament. There are several symptoms:
• Redness and swelling
• Surface bruising
• Difficulty walking
• Dull, throbbing ache or sharp, cramping pain

The usual treatment for sprains is RICE – rest, ice, compress, elevate.
1. REST means immobilizing the injured part (e.g. Keeping the weight off a torn muscle).
2. ICE acts as an anaesthetic, reduces swelling, and slows the flow of blood to the injured area. To avoid damaging the tissue, the ice is applied indirectly (e.g. in a tea towel or plastic bag) for up to 20 minutes at a time with 30 minutes between applications.
3. COMPRESSION usually involves wrapping a bandage round the injured part to reduce swelling. The bandage should be snug but not too tight.
4. ELEVATION means raising the injured limb. This reduces swelling by helping to keep excess fluid away from the damaged area.

Recovery from a sports injury often involves RICE followed by stretching and strengthening exercises. RICE stands for rest, ice, compression, and elevation.
After 72 hours of RICE treatment, heat and gentle massage can be used to loosen the surrounding muscles. If the injury keeps occurring. Physiotherapy can be used to strengthen the surrounding muscles.

Dislocations
Gymnasts also suffer from joint injuries, often at the knee joint. Cartilage in the knee is an excellent shock absorber, but floor routines put a lot of force on the joints. If a gymnast lands off balance, their kneecap can become dislocated. This happens when the bone slips out of the joint. In contact sports such as rugby dislocations of the shoulder are extremely common. Dislocations are very painful.

How are athletic injuries prevented?
The following are some of the strategies that may help teens prevent athletic injuries:
• Before each training or sports event, warm up and then cool down afterward
• Do flexibility exercises
• Train within safe ranges for one’s age and size
• Use proper and well fitted equipment
• Keep oneself physically fit
• Begin training one to two months before the sports activity is to begin
• Gradually increase one’s training time but not more than ten percent each week

Who is likely to develop athletic injuries?
Adolescents may be at special risk for athletic injuries. During the growth spurt, the skeleton must support increased weight and load. As a result, there is increased risk for a severe injury in teens. It is well known that the number of football injuries increase for teenagers as they grow in height and weight. During growth and development, agility, power, speed and motor coordination improve. Girls by age fourteen years seem to stabilize in regard to motor performance while boys improve during the later teenage years.