Doctors, trainers and physical therapists keep a key a close eye on athletes’ rehabilitation after an injury. They try to make sure that the athletes are fully recovered before allowing them to once again participate in the sport. However do they go far enough?
Most often you’ll find that athletes are ,rehabilitated in relation to having a full range of motion and having no signs of the injury. In other words, the athletes have now strengthened the muscles that were weakened and have brought the joint and mobility in the joint, back to where it was prior to the injury. They now give the athletes the green light to participate.
This is good as far as it goes. However there is still one aspect that has not been treated that must be addressed before the athletes can fully and safely participate in their sport. Even though they can now exercise or play, it does not mean that they are ready to participate on the same level as they did prior to the injury.
They may be ready to participate, have no pain and can execute many if not all of the actions needed but not on the level needed to prevent injury or to show a very high level of performance. To bring them back the level needed, it is necessary that they do exercises to strengthen the muscles in the same manner as they are used in execution of the sport skill.
In other words, they must do specialized exercises also known as dynamic correspondence exercises. These exercises develop strength in the same manner as they are displayed in execution of the skill. The athletes develop strength as they go through the same technique involved in execution of the game skill.
In rehabilitation it is important to understand that in order to prevent the same injury from occurring again it is necessary to improve the athlete’s ability to execute the movement in an effective movement pattern and have been sufficient strength of the muscles to do this. Merely being able to use the joint without pain may be great for doing simple movements, but the athlete must be able to execute the skill on a high-level without fear of injury.
Only specialized (also known as dynamic correspondence) exercises can do this. If the athletes do not do these exercises it explains why it is not uncommon to hear of many athletes who must take more days off after beginning to play or experiencing discomfort etc.. Once they begin playing again they find that the rehabilitation is taking somewhat longer even though they can play.
This brings out the need for more specificity of training during rehabilitation to prepare the athlete for what he must do in the sport and not merely prepare the athlete to become active again. In order to do this, it is necessary that teams develop or hire specialists who are familiar with the development of specialized exercises and who are capable of analyzing athletes’ movements so that they can prescribe exercises that duplicate what they do in execution of the sport skills.
For more information on this see the Yessis system for improving performance and Build a Better Athlete.