Do you keep hoping your best players will not be injured? Do you wish that your team will go through the season with no injuries? Do you keep hoping that any injury sustained by a player will not affect how well the team does?
I’m sure that most every coach will have had these desires or hopes at one time or another. It is almost impossible not to have such wishes in view of what appears to be a strong trend in most sports. It is the increasing number of injuries sustained by the players in practice and in gameplay. Are these injuries now part of the game?
It is said that there are only two things in life that you can count on: taxes and death. I would like to add a third when dealing with athletes: injury. If you on athlete you will be injured. I feel pretty confident that most anyone who has ever played sports has experienced an injury that has limited his ability to play.
Injuries are now so commonplace that all or will most athletes and coaches, injuries are an accepted part of the game. This is especially so in professional and collegiate sports. On these two levels of play, and very often in high school ball, you can read about new injuries almost every day. They’re not limited to only one or two teams, but seem to permeate the leagues.
Of course, some of these injuries are inevitable when they are due to physical contact. But of the number of injuries that occur, many are preventable. This should not be startling news. But these words often appear to fall on deaf ears, and mostly ineffective, practices continue. This is due to the myths that permeate and guide to a good extent what takes place in sports.
For example, in a typical strength and conditioning program, there are no specialized strength exercises that duplicate the joint actions seen in the athlete’s running, cutting, throwing and hitting skills. In addition, most rehabilitation programs consist of general strength exercises to get the muscles stronger but not stronger in the way the muscles function in the specific skill actions.
In fact, I would venture to say that most trainers do not even understand what is involved in execution of the basic skills. This is why specialized, or dynamic correspondence strength exercises as they are also known as, are not used in the rehabilitation. Instead they really rely on whether the athlete has pain when he resumes playing.
As a result athletes are not physically or technically prepared to execute the skills involved in the game. Understand that most injuries have a neuromuscular basis; they are not simply caused from physical weakness. For example, hamstring injuries often occur while running or cutting, back injuries from bending over and knee injuries from a quick plant and turn.
In many instances athletes experience soreness or pain without knowing the source. They often try to play through these types of injuries only to eventually become disabled. In addition, it appears that ankle injuries are also commonplace regardless of whether the athlete gets taped before the game.
But all, or at least most of these injuries can be prevented. There are many reasons why they are not addressed and the fault does not always lie with the team. The athletes must play a bigger role in taking care of themselves. However, this will probably not happen unless the teams become more demanding.
And so as stated in the title, injuries will continue to increase. If you wait long enough, you’ll see just about every type of injury that is possible on the playing field.
For more information on this topic read Sports Is It All B.S.? and Build a Better Athlete.