Exercise Physiology Flashcards
What are the two types of injuries?
- Acute
- Chronic
What is an Acute Injury?
- Occurs suddenly during exercise/competition
- e.g. sprained ankle or torn ligament
- Pain is felt straight away & often severe
What is a chronic injury?
- Occurs after playing sport or exercise for a long time-are often called over use injury. T
Develop slowly, can last a long time & are often ignored by performers, which makes the injury worse, causing more problems
What signs can a performer who experiences an acute injury show?
- Sudden, severe pain
- Swelling around the injured site
- Not being able to bear weight
- Restricted movement
- Extreme leg or arm weakness
- A protruding bone or a joint that is visibly out of place
Give some examples of acute injuries.
- Fractures
- Dislocations
- Strains
- Sprains
What is a fracture?
- break or crack in bone- a bone can fracture in different ways.
- A simple or a closed fracture is a clean break to a bone that doesn’t penetrate through the skin/ damage any surrounding tissue.
What type of fractures are there?
-
Comminuted- Bone breaks off splinters into 3 or more pieces
Spiral- Winding break, e.g. a tackle in football, stood on foot & leg twists underneath defender/tackler
Longitudinal- Break occurs along length of the bone
Buckles- Occurs in children where bone deforms but doesn’t brake e.g. when you fall but not that hard
Hairline- Partial fracture of the bone that is difficult to detect
Greenstick-Occur in children where the bone partly fractures on one side but doesn’t break completely.
This is because in young children the bone is softer and more elastic so it can bend
What is a dislocation?
- Dislocations occur at joints
- It happens when ends of bones are forced out of position.
- Dislocations often occur with fall/ contact with another player,
for example, in football tackles they are often very easy to see as the bone looks visibly out of place
What are strains?
- Often called ‘pulled’/ ‘torn’ muscle
- Strain occurs when muscle fibres are stretched too far & tear.
- Occur regularly In team games from contact w other players & where the performer continually accelerates & deaccelerates suddenly.
- Elite athletes also prone to strains where intensity of training is high & the overuse of specific muscle groups occurs regularly.
What is a sprain?
- Occur to ligaments which are strong bands of tissue around joints that join bone to bone.
- When excessive force is applied to a joint, sprain can occur where ligament is stretched too far or tears.
- In sport sprained ankle is v common injury. E.g. swimming, sprinting, explosive event athletes
What signs are shown with chronic injuries?
- Pain when you compete or exercise
- A dull ache when you rest
- Swelling
What is achilles tendonitis?
- Tendonitis is an over-use injury that causes pain & inflammation of the tendon.
- The Achilles tendon is located at back of ankle & is the largest tendon in the body.
Connects gastrocnemius to heel bone & is used for walking, running & jumping, so when we do a lot of regular activity it can be prone to tendonitis.
What is a stress fracture?
- An over-use injury where area becomes tender & swollen.
- Stress fractures are most common in weight-bearing bones of legs, often when there is an increase in amount of exercise, or intensity of an activity is increased too quickly.
Happens when muscles become fatigued, so they are no longer able to absorb added shock of exercise.
What is tennis elbow?
- Over-use injury & occurs in the muscles attached to the elbow that are used to straighten wrist.
- The muscles & tendons become inflamed & tiny tears occur on the outside of the elbow. Area becomes very sore & tender.
medical term for tennis elbow is lateral epicondylitis
Any activity that places repeated stress on the elbow can cause tennis elbow and, as the name suggests, this injury often occurs in tennis
What injury prevention methods are there?
- Screening
- Protective equipment
- Warm up
- Flexability Training
- Taping & Bracing
What is screening?
- Screening can be used to help identify those at risk of complications from exercise
- It can be used to detect a problem early before any symptoms, occur
For example, many young elite performers have CRY heart screening.
What is CRY & how does screening help this?
- ‘Cardiac risk in the young’
- An ECG is used to assess & monitor a performers heart
- Test is encouraged by most sport governing bodies due to demands of elite sport & stress it can place on heart
- Screening can also identify musculoskeletal condition of athletes which can highlight past/ current injuries- enabling performer to select relevant training programme that will prevent further injury
- Can also be used to prevent injury
What are the disadvantages of screening?
- Some screening tests are not 100% accurate & may miss a problem (false negative)
- Or can identify a problem that doesn’t exist (false positive)
- Can also increase anxiety when athlete finds out they have health problem or are more susceptible to injury.
How can protective equipment prevent injuries? Give some examples of protective equipment.
- Wearing the correct protective equipment can help reduce injuries
e.g:
Football-Ankle & shin pads
Rugby-Scrum cap, gum shiel, body armour
Cricket-Batting pads, thigh pads,box,helmet,gloves
Hockey- Leg guard, shin guard, pads, kickers, face mask for short corner, gloves, helmet
Squash- Eye guards
How can a warm up prevent injury?
- Should always be carried out before start of training session.
- WU will reduce possibility of injury by increasing elasticity of muscle tissue.
- Happens because a warm-up will increase the body’s muscle temperature.
- HR & respiratory rate also increase, which increase blood flow & therefore the delivery of oxygen & nutrients to the working muscle.
Preparing muscles, tendons & joints for strenuous activity
What is flexability training & what are the types of stretches involved in this training?
- Flexability training should involve the joints & muscles that will be most active during the activity
Types of stretches: - Active
- Passive
- Static
- Ballistic
What is active & passive stretching?
- Active- Involves performer working on one joint, pushing it beyond its point of resistance, lengthening muscles & conncective tissue around it
- Passive- When a stretch occurs w help of an external force such as another part of your body, a partner or a wall
an example is holding your leg up high in the air
What is static & ballistic stretching?
- Static stretching- Stretching while not moving- involves holding a muscle in the furthest point you can for up to 30 secs e.g. trying to touch your toes
- Ballistic stretching- Involves performing a stretch w swinging or bouncing movements to push a body part even further
- It is important that this type of stretch shld only be performed by an individual who is extremely flexible such as a gymnast
What is taping and how can this prevent injury?
- Taping a weak joint can help w support & stability to reduce risk of injury
- Taping can also be used on muscles- tape used for muscles is more elastic than used on joints & is applied directly to the skin to provide controlled support as muscle moves
- Called Kinesiology tape & expands as the muscle contracts