Reducing Risk of Sports-Related Injuries
As athletes, we have all had our share of injuries that result from training. Some injuries merely nag us for a few days, but others can be devastating and life long. Medical science is a great tool in helping people recover from injuries, but the best tool is prevention. Below are some tips on how to reduce your risk of injury when you train:
Be fully hydrated.
Our muscles are naturally very smooth, viscous (pronounced: VIS-kuhs) tissues. Feel the inside of your cheek with your tongue -- it feels really slick. This "slickness" is how your muscles feel as they rub up against each other as you work out. When you are dehydrated, however, your muscles lose their viscosity. Instead of sliding along with each other when working out, they instead catch on each other and try to stick to one another. This makes muscle injuries much more likely. It is therefore very important to be fully hydrated when working out.
How do you know if you are hydrated enough during your workouts? If you get thirsty during a workout, you are very dehydrated. In fact, your body is actually dehydrated before you get thirsty. The thirst feeling occurs only when the rest of your body is extremely dehydrated. (It works much like the "dummy" lights on the dashboard of your car: when a warning light comes on, your car will only run a few more miles before it gives out and dies.) So, if you experience thirst during your workouts, you need to drink much more water beforehand -- most experts say 3 to 5 cups of water an hour-and-a-half before working out. And if your workout is very long, consider adding several short breaks for water or sports drinks during your workout.
Stretching.
There is nothing like hearing the "pop" of a muscle rupturing in half. Worse yet, there is nothing like feeling your own muscle rupture. The initial pain can be excruciating, but the long recovery ahead is much, much worse. For the next several weeks, the muscle strain victim's best friends will be his or her ice pack, ace bandage, aspirin, and later, a heating pad. Then comes the really tortuous part -- stretching the muscle back out. Depending upon the degree of damage to the muscle, getting the muscle back to normal can take any time frame from a few weeks to never. The vast majority of muscle strains can be prevented, however, with a proper warm-up followed by an effective stretching routine.
Now, before anyone tries to jump into splits out of an uninhibited, spontaneous burst of motivation, realize that stretching without properly warming up will actually do more harm than good. Without sufficient blood supply and fluids pumping through a muscle, stretching it will simply cause billions of microscopic tears, which will weaken the muscle and make it susceptible to more serious injury. The circulation of fluids within a muscle increases its viscosity (its ability to stretch), and prevents microscopic tearing. It is therefore important to be fully hydrated and warmed up before trying to stretch.
The goal of stretching is to prevent injury by increasing mobility and range of motion. Preventing injury is a science -- but not a difficult science. It simply involves a person listening to his or her body and then having the ability to do what it says. Many times we hear our bodies telling us, "Don't do that again -- I'm about to get hurt," but we do it again anyway, getting ourselves hurt just as our bodies said we would. It is very difficult to lay off from an activity that we enjoy, especially when we have our fitness goals and dreams etched into our every thought. But if our true purpose is to build and strengthen our bodies (and not our egos), we will listen to them, and we will avoid injury. One way for a person to listen to his or her body is to practice stretching. By stretching, one gains insight into the ranges of motion for all appendages, thus learning ones own physical limitations and enabling him or herself to "listen" to the body more effectively.
Order of workout.
There are many more components of a workout than simply working out. It is important to work out in proper order: warm-up, stretch, work out, cool down some, stretch again, then cool down completely. Warming up consists of getting the blood pumping and raising the body temperature by one or two degrees. Good warm-ups include such activities as walking and light jogging. Warming up prepares the body for stretching, (stretching needs the body temperature to be slightly higher than normal). It is best to stretch in a warm area in loose clothing. Stretching prepares the body for working out safely. Only after plenty of stretching (I say at least 20 minutes), begin the workout. At the end of the workout cool down a bit with some light activity, like brisk walking that slows down over a few minutes. This gradually lowers body temperature and pushes blood and other fluids through tired muscles instead of letting it pool there. After cooling down a bit, stretch out all over again. Then cool down one more time with very light activity, or even better, a massage. This gets the body temperature back to normal and gets the blood back to circulating normally.
Develop muscles evenly.
Muscles that work opposite of each other control all of our joints. Since the quads and hamstrings are used so often in Taekwondo, lets use those muscles as an example. The quads and hamstrings control the knee. When the quads contract, the hamstrings stretch, and vice versa. When one group of muscles are stronger than the opposite group, the joint becomes more prone to injury. For example, when the hamstrings out-perform the quads, the tendons in the knee try to assist the quads to do their job. This is bad because those tendons were not really designed to do this -- their sole purpose is to connect the muscle to the bone. This in turn places undue stress on the bones and joint, causing them to bend and sometimes even break or dislocate.
How can you tell if your muscles have equal strength? Weight lift. Focus on the major muscle groups that act opposite of each other on your joints. If you lift x number of pounds with y repetitions for your quads, you should technically be able to do the exact same thing with your hamstrings, and vice versa. If you suspect a weakness in a muscle group, act immediately and fix it by lifting weights. This will greatly lower your risk for injuring that joint.
Biomechanics.
Sometimes, just the way that a person walks can cause pain and injury. Probably the most frequent problem people have is pronation, which is the tendency to walk "flat-footed" by turning the arch of the foot downward to the ground. When the arch is turned downward it puts the ankle in a different angle from normal, and this in turn puts the knee at another odd angle, which also puts the hip at another bad angle. When joints that are aligned at unnatural angles, everyday activities such as walking become damaging to the joints. The normal impact of the foot hitting the floor and the weight of the body adding pressure to the tissue is normally absorbed by certain specific places in the joints. When the foot is pronated, however, all of that stress is instead absorbed in other places that were not designed to handle that stress. Over time, these areas weaken and all sorts of chronic conditions, the most common being arthritis, set in. Arthritis is not just painful for an athlete, it is also debilitating. It weakens joints and makes acute injuries like sprains and dislocations much more likely.
How can you tell if your gait (walk) is healthy? Visit a podiatrist or chiropractor that offers gait analysis. That person can tell you if you are over-pronating, and he or she can also help you fix the problem with specially designed shoe inserts.
Wear good shoes and work out on a soft floor.
Practicing high-impact drills on a hard floor is one of the worst things you can do to your body. The high impact wears the cartilage in your joints down to nothing, and the damage is irreversible. Only invasive surgery can fix it. The best way to prevent this is to play on a soft surface and wear fully cushioned shoes that have arch support. Unfortunately, shoes are not allowed in most traditional Do Jangs, and if shoes are allowed they are only the Taekwondo shoes that have no arch support or cushioning in the soles. Sometimes, tradition is just plain bad. You can control your personal workouts, however, so at least take good care of your feet in those workouts.
Allow time to heal between workouts.
No matter how light or heavy a workout is, it always brings stress on the body. Stress produces billions of microscopic injuries to bodily tissue. These tissues and cells take at least 24 hours to heal, (and that happens only if the body is fully hydrated and properly nourished during the healing process -- otherwise, it takes longer.) "So what," you ask? When cells are not allowed to heal, they remain in a constant state of injury. Soon, these tiny microscopic injuries accumulate and develop into larger tissue-sized injuries, which then snowball into constant muscular strains. All of this weakens the muscle and makes devastating injuries to muscles and joints much more likely. In addition, the risk for developing a chronic (life-long and incurable) disease such as arthritis becomes an unwanted and inevitable promise.
If the simple idea of waiting 24 hours between workouts is beyond your ability to accept, just remember that your goal is not just to be physically fit right now, but to be physically fit ten, twenty, or thirty years from now. So many people who were once great athletes in youth become old cripples later in life because they did not take good care of their bodies. And the worst part is that these poor people are stuck with decrepit and agonizingly painful bodies until they die. Don't let that happen to you! There is no cure for arthritis and other degenerative diseases, and there may never be one. There is only prevention.
Disclaimer: The author is certified through the American Red Cross in Sports Safety Training. The author is not a medical doctor, and is not responsible for any unfortunate circumstances resulting from the use of her advice. Consult with your physician before changing your current training system or beginning any new training system.
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