Lecture 4 - Injury in Sport & Exercise: Controllable Factors (1)

Question 1

What is a major consideration when designing a strength program to decrease risk of injury?

Answer 1

• Ensuring that there is a balance between agonist/ antagonist muscle groups.

Question 2

What is the process of chronic injury tissue breakdown?

Answer 2

• During periods of excessive training the tissue becomes damaged but no pain is felt.
• As this breakdown builds there may be an even that caused a further injury of the tissue.
• Activity is then progressively attempted but this increases the damage until eventually the tissue heals with a permanent loss of function.

Question 3

What are the sites of failure from fatigue?

Answer 3

• The CNS
• From the CNS to the muscle ( neural transmission )
• Within individual muscle fibres.

Question 4

Why is repeating skill in sport useful and why is the value of high reputations questioned?

Answer 4

• The brain’s sub-cortical centres learn to automate it without need for conscious control.
• Is questioned because Elite sports people tend to vary the way they compete well learned tasks, which can then lead to injury as they are unprepared for the new movement.

Question 5

What was represented by Bartlett (1999), about the levels of muscle imbalance and occurance of injuries?

Answer 5

• Swimmers with similar strengths for lateral and medial rotators of shoulder reported less pain than those with larger imbalance
• Contralateral hamstring-quadriceps imbalance of greater than 10% is linked to increased injury risk. This often occurs because of the breakdown of the fine balance of motor control of the two muscle groups through fatigue.

Question 6

What causes neuro-muscular fatigue?

Answer 6

• CNS preventing muscular contraction by means of inhibiting nerve cell excitation.

Question 7

What causes a reduction in the effectiveness of the SSC with fatigue?

Answer 7

• Reduction in the storage of elastic energy by increase in transition time from stretch to shortening.
• Decreased leg stiffness due to earlier fatigue of bicep fem and rec fem compared to the gas and tib ant.

Question 8

What are some examples of training errors?

Answer 8

• Overtraining and overreaching
• Not following a plan of gradual loading
• Repeating the same activity even when fatigued (no skill can be learned)
• Not preparing for the specific needs of the activity

Question 9

Why does the body sometimes limit the level if nerve cell excitation ?

Answer 9

• To prevent muscular and nervous damage by training too hard, e.g. continually training to exhaustion can damage neural system.

Question 10

What is overreaching ?

Answer 10

• Overreaching is usually considered a prolonged
  state of fatigue, with certain symptoms displayed,
  but which disappears after a few days to a week. It
  may be caused by taking part in a strenuous competition.

Question 11

With acute injuries why is it not always best to start training again once the pain from an injury has gone?

Answer 11

• The pain may have subsided but there is still significate damage within the tissue and performing exercise too soon can lead to a lower level of final healing, impairing future performance or the chance of re-injury.

Question 12

What is overtraining?

Answer 12

Overtraining is a prolonged state of fatigue, which may take weeks or months to overcome. It results from a lack of rest.

Question 13

What is fatigue and why does it occur?

Answer 13

• Fatigue is the main cause of reduction in performance
  of a sportsperson, Which can lead to adaptation.
• Occurs with sustained exercise and is characterised by a reduction in power output and a decline in performance.