Common Sports-Related Injuries
Participating in sports strengthens your bones, joints and heart, among many other benefits. However, injuries are inevitable and can also happen to people in sports despite the many precautions undertaken. In most cases, injuries are caused by the lack of proper warm-up exercises necessary to prepare the body for the strenuous activities later on, by the omission or misuse of proper sports equipment or by accidents.
The spine, elbows, knees, shoulders and ankles are the most common areas that are injured during sports-related activities. Below are just some of the frequent injuries that can happen.
Muscle Pull or Muscle Tear. Sometimes, no matter how you religiously do your warm-up, cool-down and stretching exercises to make your muscles flexible, muscle pulls or tears can occur when your muscles are stretched too much from its limits. Pulls occur when a severe and quick force is done to the muscle, causing a few of your muscle fibres to break. Tear occur when most of the fibres already break. To prevent these, do your exercises routinely. When you are about to do strenuous activities, warm your muscles up properly by gradually increasing the force exerted on your muscles over long period of time.
Muscle Cramps. Although its cause is commonly unknown, cramps are involuntary and painful muscle contractions usually in the calf and legs. It is so painful that you cannot use the affected part due to the pain although it only lasts few seconds or minutes.
Tendinosis. This condition occurs when a joint becomes painful and dysfunctional due to overuse. Tendinitis is a common form of tendinosis in which tendons are inflamed.
Stress Fractures. Also called fatigue fracture, stress fracture happens when strong amount of force is exerted into a bone. This can happen to runners who suddenly increase their mileage, or to first time runners who overdo their running. Like muscle pull or tear, exercises should be done gradually when doing strenuous tasks to prevent stress fractures.
These and many more are just some of the injuries that you should watch out when doing sports-related activities.
