Injury prevention Flashcards
What is an acute injury ?
-Sudden, severe pain felt immediately
- Damage to bones, muscles and ligaments
- Swelling occurs around the injured site
- Extreme leg or arm weakness
- bone out of place
- e.g. rugby tackle
What is a chronic injury ?
- Overuse injuries
- The result of continuous stress on an area
- Injuries tend to come on gradually over a period of time
- Can’t pinpoint when an injury started
- Can lead to arthritis
What are some examples of acute injuries ?
- Fractures
- Dislocations
- Strains
- Sprains
What is a fracture ?
A break/crack in the bone
Two types of fractures:
Closed fracture = clean break
Open fracture = soft tissue/ skin is damaged
What are different types of fractures ?
Comminuted = Bone breaks or splinters into 3 parts
Spiral = A winding break
Longitudinal = Break along the length of the bone
Buckle = Bone deforms but doesn’t break
Hairline = A part fracture of the bone that is difficult to detect
What is a dislocation ?
- Occurs at joints
- The ends of the bones are forced out of position
- Occur due to falls or contact with other players
What is a strain ?
- pulled/torn muscle
- occurs when fibres are stretched too far and tear
- Occur when contact is made with someone else or acceleration and deceleration in quick succession
- Elite athletes get them due to the overuse of specific muscle groups
What is a sprain ?
- Occurs in ligaments
- ## when twisting and turning excessive force is applied to a joint, this force can lead to a sprain
What are examples of a chronic injury ?
- Achilles tendonitis
- Stress fracture
- Tennis elbow
What is achilles tendonitis ?
- Tendons connect muscle to bone
- Tendonitis occurs due to over-use which means pain and inflammation occurs
- Achilles used for walking, running and jumping
- If your sport does these a lot - tendonitis can occur
What is a stress fracture
- Common in the weight-bearing bones of the legs
- Often happens if there is an increase in exercise or intensity too quickly
- Muscles become fatigues which means they cannot absorb the shock from exercise
- The muscle transfers the overload of stress to the bone which results in a small crack
What is ‘Tennis elbow’ ?
- occurs in the muscle in the elbow that straighten the wrist
- the muscles and tendons get inflamed and tiny tears happen on the outside of the elbow
- Medical term = lateral epicondylitis
- Any activity that places repeated stress on the elbow can cause this
How can screening held prevent injury ?
- Identifies those at risk of injuries and helps reduce it
- prepares performers for their sport
- Screenings such as CRY heart screening to assess a performers heart
- Also can highlight potential musculoskeletal conditions from past or current injuries - therefore a specific training programme can be generates
- However some screening tests aren’t 100% accurate or can identify a problem that doesn’t exist (false positive)
How do warm ups prevent injuries and what are the stages ?
- Reduces risk of injury as it increases the elasticity of the muscles
- First stage = cardiovascular exercise (e.g. running)
- Second stage = stretching exercises
- Third stage = Movement patterns that are about to be carried out
Examples of how protective equipment can help prevent injuries ?
Football = Shin pads
Rugby = Scrum caps, gum shield
What is flexibility training ?
- Should involve the joints and muscles that are active during the activity
Active stretching:
- Working on one joint and pushing it past its point of resistance by lengthening the muscles and tissues
Passive stretching:
- Stretch occurs with the help of external forces such as another part of the body, a partner, a wall
Static stretching:
- Stretching whilst not mot moving
- Holding a muscle in the furthest stretching for up to 30 seconds
Ballistic stretching:
- stretching whilst swinging or bouncing
- important for this to be performed on an already flexibile individual
How can taping and bracing help an athelte ?
- Taping a weak joint helps with support and stability
- This prevents injury
- Taping can also be used on muscles
- This type of tape is more elastic and applied directly to the skin to provide controlled support
- Called kinesiology tape
- Bracing often involves hinged supports
- Gives support to muscles and joints that have been previously injured
- Aims to prevent further injury
What is proprioceptive training ?
- Subconscious process
- Uses receptor nerves
- To have smooth movements, the brain needs to have accurate knowledge of arm and leg positioning
- Proprioceptors deliver important info about this - during injury proprioception is impaired
- Uses hopping, jumping and balancing techniques
- Uses these to restore proprioception and teach the body about the new positioning of injured joints
- E.g. the use of a wobble board to help an ankle injury
- unpredictable so it strengthens the ankle joint and teaches the body to quickly react to wobbly movements
What are the different types of strength training used to help reduce injury ?
- Free weights
- Machine weights
- Body weight
- Therabands
What are Free weights ?
- E.g. Dumbells and Kettlebells
- Need control to be lifted as they aren’t reliant on machines
- Muscles have to stabilise the weight as well as lifting it
What are machine weights ?
- Machine has a lot of control
- Used in early stages of injury as focus can be on improving strength
- Starts with low weights and is gradually built up
What is body weight ?
- Body used as resistance
- Involves core exercises
- Helps balance and posture
- Any imbalances of these could lead to injury
What are therabands ?
- made of latex
- different strengths
- Light bands are used for rehabilitation
- As injury improves, greater resistance is used
What are hyperbaric chambers ?
- Aims to reduce recovery time for an injury
- pressurised chamber where there is 100% pure oxygen
- This pressure means more oxygen is breathed in which means more oxygen diffused to the injured areas
- Excess oxygen dissolves to the plasma where swelling can be reduced
