Around 3.5 million around the world people suffer sports injuries yearly. That’s a staggering number of people considering they were just out trying to have fun! It’s too many, and most could have been avoided.
The plain truth is, sometimes accidents just happen, there’s no getting around it, but with some care and attention they don’t happen as often. If you have sustained a sports injury, playing the blame game with yourself won’t help much now, please focus on getting well. An excellent way to do that is to obtain some professional help like the Bangkok Physiotherapy Center can provide. Getting proper treatment and therapy for your injury is the key to healing, and will get you back out on the sports field a lot quicker!
Now, let’s see what you can do to help make sure a sports injury doesn’t happen in the first place!
Research shows that most sports injuries are caused by two different factors: overuse and trauma. Trauma injuries are the accidents that happen during the heat of the game, like the drama of a player taking a bad hit and being tossed spout over tea kettle onto the pitch to lie there moaning and clutching a limb in obvious pain. Overuse is when athletes push too hard and cease to listen to their body’s warning signs, exerting themselves past the limits, and right into a world of hurt. Both of these can usually be avoided, even in most trauma injuries, with proper training and preparation.
Setting realistic goals for your sports performance and working hard to achieve them is a good start. The thing is, your goals must be obtainable and sustainable, unrealistic goals are going to cause you to push yourself too hard, only serving to increase your chances of suffering both trauma and overuse injuries. Start with deciding to run a certain distance or swim a certain number of laps that you know you are capable of, then gradually increase them.
If you decide to double down today and do twice as many as you have been, it’s just going to end badly for you and your body, resulting in exactly the opposite of what you had hoped to achieve- you in a hospital bed instead of out playing your best game! Common sense rules the day here. It’s like studying for an exam, if you try to cram it all into the last night you’re bound to fail, studying up gradually ensures success!
A common mistake is to eschew the essential warm-ups and cool-downs in favour of hitting the deck hard and maximising playtime. There are good reasons we do those essential activities, they prepare the body to work hard so you don’t get injured. Being in a rush to achieve greatness will just push that goal farther away as you limp about with what amounts to a self-inflicted wound. For more useful sports information, visit Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports website.
Listen to your body and play safe!
