FAQ's About Sports Injuries

Today we're gonna go over the top frequently asked questions we're asked about sports injuries on a day-to-day basis.

I Was Told That Surgery Is The Only Option. Can You Help Me?

The truth is it depends, right. Some patients are told who have an athletic injury, that surgery is their only option.

But other times, these patients can be fixed, because maybe the physician or medical provider that was evaluating them had a wrong diagnosis.

It really just depends on your end game and goal, where you're trying to get to, and if we can help you.

Should I Use Ice Or Heat?

So, that's a big question we get quite frequently.

Generally speaking, if it's an acute injury or swelling is present, we wanna use ice.

If there's no swelling, we wanna typically use heat on the injured area.

Do Foot Orthotics Work?

So, foot orthotics are commonly used, to help realign the knee, the foot, and the hip, and I would say foot orthotics do work for some patients, and some patients do need them to stay injury-free.

So for instance, I had this one athlete, he kept having knee pain but he had this structural flat foot, and I couldn't change it because his bone integrity is changed, and that's just how he was born and made.

Because of his flat foot, it was causing increased torque on his knee and so every time he ran, his knee would get injured and irritated.

This was a patient that needed a foot orthotic and it actually helped him.

The problem with most foot orthotics is though that, they're made incorrectly.

They don't have enough support or they have too much support.

It's a fine line of getting that right balance between providing stability for that specific foot.

This is something an evaluation from a Doctor can discern whether you need foot orthotics or not for your specific condition.

Should I Just Stretch? Do I Need To Stretch More?

A lot of people think that they need to stretch more, but a lot of times they're doing the wrong type of stretching.

And so, in my prior posts, I've talked about the benefits of dynamic warm-up and mobility movements versus static stretching.

When you do a dynamic warm-up it actually activates your nerves and your nervous system to help prevent injuries but, it also allows and mimics your sport.

So, your chances of injury are less likely.

Now conversely, static stretching should never be done prior to competition because what it does is it, reduces that nerve in the nervous system's excitability, and so you're more likely to get injured.

Now you'd want to typically stretch, only if a muscle is tight.

That's where the long-duration static stretching occurs, and so that's what we have our athletes do for instance that have tight hip flexors or quads.

We actually may have them hold that stretch after their workout for maybe 15 or 20 minutes just to get the length and, changes in their tissue, but we would never have them do that ahead of time.

The same thing goes if you've strained your hamstring, you don't wanna stretch it out because it's already stretched.

So when you strain a muscle our first intention is to stretch it but the muscles have already been stretched and the chances are if you're doing this, it's going to make it worse and worse.

It can further exacerbate that injury and cause more trauma.

How Do You Prevent A Hamstring Injury From Happening?

Speaking of hamstring injuries, hamstring injuries are another common frequent sports injury that we get.

What we do with our clients is strength training.

Strength training has been shown and proven to help increase the strength and stability of the hamstring to absorb the forces of sprinting and changing direction.

But we also do a thing called the Nordic Hamstring Curl, where it's basically like an eccentric exercise, it puts the most tension on the hamstring.

Basically what we're doing is bulletproofing that hamstring, so that when I do sprint I have enough force and control through that tissue that I don't sprain it.

This is a killer exercise, it's a really great way to avoid a hamstring strain because commonly what we see, it's not a flexibility issue, it's more of a strength component to your hamstring injuries.

There's one I can think of, but I don't know if you could answer it.

It's, I think most people wanna know when they can get back into the game.

When Is An Athlete Ready To Get Back Into The Game?

I think the biggest thing is knowing the athlete's mindset.

Having been a Division 1 athlete, working with Olympic level athletes and other athletes, we wanna get back out there ASAP because we're competitors, right?

We have to do it though in a safe manner.

As the provider, I'm looking at risk verse reward.

If I let this athlete back out on the field too early, am I putting that athlete's career in jeopardy, are they set up for more injury?

Are they gonna hurt someone else?

So these are all things that I'm weighing but, we basically take our athletes through different tests to discern when they are able to return.

We can look at just baseline objective data on what are the common scores on certain tests, but a lot of times what we'll do is if I have someone that came in and rolled their right ankle, I can test their left ankle to see how it compares to the right and do some functional tests of hopping and jumping.

I can see if there's a big disparity between right and left.

I know that this athlete isn't ready to return back to the sport safely.

Conversely, if I do all these tests and the athlete looks pretty darn good and he's fluid with their movements and there's not a lot of real pain, you know, I'm probably gonna let this athlete return back to sport safely and sooner rather than later.

So there you have it.

Those are like the top frequently asked questions we're asked in our clinic on a day-to-day basis about sports injuries.

I hope that you know, you learn some informative stuff about this.

Why Should I Choose Your Fort Myers, FL Sports Injury Clinic?

To be frank, Back In Motion is the only conservative experts of athletic and sports injury specialists near you and can get to the root cause of your sports injury rather than just treating symptoms like most other offices.

Plus, my team and I were all athletes so we know what it feels like to be injured and unable to participate or play.

If you have a sports injury, you don’t need to suffer any longer.

We offer a free discovery visit to see if we can help you. To claim that all you need to do is hit the button below and one of our specialists will be in contact with you.

Call our office at 239-223-0484 and schedule your appointment today!

We offer Physical Therapy in Fort Myers, FL, and Physical Therapy in Cape Coral, FL.