Pro-Am Sports Injury Clinic

Injury Prevention

Reduce your chances of injury with Pro-Am Sports Injury Clinic

It’s a devastating occurrence when you are impeded by injury, whether you feel a nagging ache in your back or had a bad tackle in football. All activities ranging from desk work to rock climbing come with injury risks, why not put a few exercises in your day or training programme to reduce the chances and severity of injuries you may be open to.

You should make your exercises specific to what you do and stop any imbalance that may occur due to repetitive motions. At Pro-Am Sports Injury Clinic, I offer a prevention of injury service, where I tailor a program for your individual needs to prevent injury.

The main areas I look at are posture, core stability and balance. All three work together too make a strong solid trunk which all movements come from. Your trunk area is vital to support your limb actions. Many injuries that occur in the limbs can be caused by weakness in the trunk. Back pain can occur due to poor spinal stabilisers which include superficial and deep muscles. The superficial muscles include the Lumbar Erector Spinae (back extensors), Illiopsoas (hip flexors) and Rectus Abdominis (muscle that give the six pack effect). The deep postural muscles are usually forgotten and not trained they include the Internal Obliques, Transversus Abdominis and Multifidus. Assessing length and strength of muscles is important in any injury prevention programme and pre-season assessments.

Here is a picture showing you how muscle imbalance can alter posture and lead to injury.

This is a classic hollow back posture, the pelvis tilts forward causing the abdominals and buttocks to lengthen and have poor muscle tone. Over time the hip flexors will shorten and the pelvic tilt now present is limited by tightness in the over active and tight hamstrings. This posture is present in many dancers and gymnasts as the sport requires high levels of spinal extension. Correction of this posture requires shortening the abdominal muscles and lengthening the hip flexors. People with this posture will have weaknesses in the deep abdominal muscles so developing effective strength is vital. This must be achieved before abdominal work starts as it is required to perform a backward tilt of the pelvis with flexion to shorten and increase tone in the abdominals.

It is also important to look at other areas which may cause muscle imbalances for example the feet. What I also find is that posture is related to the type of job and/or sport you are involved in. Some peoples posture will suit them for the type of activities they are involved in. It is only when pain/discomfort is started to be felt that the muscle imbalance could be causing a problem. Why treat muscles which have no symptoms?

Core stability helps to support posture and gives stability during movements, it can also help balance. Balance is very rarely put into a program but is vital as many activities require your weight to be on one side (walking, tennis, karate). Dynamic balance can be a weakness of many athletes who present with back pain.

The end result is a programme designed to combat individual weaknesses in your human chain that may occur due to the type of work or sport you participate in. What you will end up with is sport/work specific exercises which may help to improve your performance and efficiency as well as decrease injury occurrence.

Prevention of injury is important to everyone whether you are a stay at home parent or professional athlete. It reduces time taken of work, saves money (treatments of injury not needed) and can take as little as 10 minutes of your time depending on your goals.

Available now at Pro-Am Sports Injury Clinic

Prevention of injury in sport

Here is a list of my articles and links that will be helpful in preventing injury

Coach Interviews

Common technical errors in sport

New! Injury Prevention

Sports Injury Prevention Children

Injury Prevention Strategies for Sport

coming soon - common muscle imbalances and using soft tissue release to prevent injury

Proprioception Training

Reduces Injury Risk

Here's a great link for anatomy of muscles and instructions on exercise's