Exercises that prevent sports injuries

Posted On Friday, 15th April 2011 at 12:49

Athletes come in all shapes and sizes, but no athlete can win if they are injured.

The treatment of children's sports injuries is both costly and time consuming. It is far better to prevent injuries, rather than treat them.

Whilst there are no guarantees, I use a combination of exercises working on:

• strengthening
• balancing
• stretching

that help create a more efficient and robust athlete.

If the athlete has a lifestyle that leads to bad posture, in combination with overuse or over repetition of one particular sporting movement then they are more likely to get injured.

Getting the child to stand up straight and sit straight when working is a challenge in itself.

This current crop of SWT athletes are doing a 5 minute a day programme of injury prevention exercises, on top of their normal training programmes. It seems to be working well, with an enthusiastic uptake. They get a poster to take home as a reminder and a DVD if they are attending training once a month or less.

Making the athlete robust

This is in combination with a training programme that challenges the athlete as they progress in fitness. The secret is to push the athlete so that they get tired and have to adapt, but not to overload them so they break.

Parents often shy away from resistance training for children, but then send them on "camps" that flog them to death for 7 hours in a day doing repetitive running. That will lead to more injuries.

It is important to vary the different exercises that are used, as the sports that children play vary in their movements and running, jumping, throwing patterns.

By gradually increasing the loads and intensity of training, the athletes start to believe in themselves and are better able to cope with adversity. This not only helps them to concentrate in their sporting environments, but to be able to perform well when others are getting fatigued.

In short: get the children moving well in a co-ordinated fashion. Then start to load them and challenge them.

It is not about randomly "beasting" young people.

We shall shortly be running some injury prevention workshops for coaches in the South West to help more young sports people.