Injury Prevention Performance Improvement Plan

Here are some more of the running seminar informations that i had shared earlier.

"Here's a 4-Step Injury Prevention Performance Improvement Plan that can help you or members of your sports team reduce your chance of getting injured, and in so doing, save your time and 'money while increasing your enjoyment of your favorite activities.

Step 1 : Have a proper review done.

• See your sports doctor or sports physiotherapist and have a professional assessment of your injury risk factors. Particular attention should be given to any current or past injuries that interfere with your activity either because of pain, weakness, or instability.

• This assessment will aim to put into place a series of exercises that specifically address your injury risk factors. These exercises include specific stretching of tight muscles and tendons, strengthening of certain muscles, and balancing your joint movements and muscles. The aim of the exercises (which may seem very simple at first) is not only to prevent injuries, but also to improve your performance of exercise or sports skills.

• These prevention-performance exercises should then be made a part of your physical preparation for your activity or sport. For sports which are played during certain competitive seasons, or for activities which you are preparing for (e.g. your first half-marathon, or the annual triathlon race), the injury risk factor review will help you to plan when you should focus on these exercises as part of your schedule. Typically, the off-season is a great time to be reviewed and to start' prevention­ performance work in preparation for the next season.

Step 2 : Invest in the right equipment

• For most exercise and sports, the most crucial piece of equipment is your shoes. If you followed the advice for Step 1, part of your review will include an assessment of your feet what shape they are, what shape they are in, what problems you may have (and some which you may not be aware of ), and how your current sports shoes perform for your toot type. Advice on the right type of shoes or perhaps supportive insoles can then lead to a lowering of your injury risk, less aches and pain, and better performance.

• Other equipment choices are dependent on your injuries you may have already. Changing the grip size of your tennis racket, altering your golf grip, or changing your golf club shafts - these may impact on chronic injuries that affect you now. Altering seat post height for cyclists with knee pain, bowling ball weight and finger positions for bowlers, correct support or bracing equipment for injured joints - the list goes on and on, all leading to reduced injury risk.

Step 3 : Manage injuries promptly & properly

• We looked at injuries and how to treat them properly. The truth is that a lot of injuries are ignored or managed inadequately because people don't attach much importance to them. By the time proper help is sought, the injury has worsened or not healed as well as it could have, and the injury recovery becomes delayed - which may be intensely frustrating indeed. Sometimes, the wrong treatment is given: a fresh injury is rubbed and massaged, and heat is applied, all of which worsens the injury and brings about more swelling. This is notoriously seen in ankle sprains, and leads to prolonged swelling, loss of strength and stability of the ankle, and delays the return to exercise and sports. In many cases, the ankle never recovers to "what it used to be".

• Timely treatment by properly trained professionals will help injuries to heal faster, identify ways to prevent further and future injuries, and reinforce prevention-performance measures to be included as part of your exercise and sports. You spend less time away -from your activity, and prevent more injuries in the longer term. Doesn't that seem to be a good idea?

Step 4 : Make prevention a way of life!

• Many sports people focus a lot of energy and resources on developing better skill and technique. Their individual and team training programs feature drills and activities that aim to sharpen such techniques as well as game or competition strategy. There is often a lack of similar zeal for physical conditioning that is aimed at preventing injuries. If this was developed properly, such conditioning would not only reduce injuries but also help to improve sports performance as well.

• Making prevention-performance a way of life means following Steps 1-3, identifying appropriate exercises, and building these into your regular individual or team training program. Prevention is then not a separate program but an integral component of the overall training program. This is the approach taken by top sports teams internationally.

• An example: in sports medicine circles world-wide, there is concern over the increased number of knee injuries in. women's sports such as netball and basketball. The specific injury is a sprain of a major knee ligament (for your tech types: the anterior cruciate ligament) and this may lead to the ligament being tom, we are no stranger to this in the local netball league. Top teams now employ a prevention strategy that consists·o1 identifying which players are at greater risk of the injury, and then correcting the factors that place them at higher risk of this ligament sprain or tear. This involves specific stretching and strengthening, alteration of landing/turning/stop-go movements, and correction of biomechanical factors including correct shoe choices.

So for all of you out there who have been injured before and suffered the infuriating delays in returning to exercise or sports, and especially for those of you who find that you have lost some strength or stability since getting injured, there is a word of hope for now and the future: prevention."