Treatments And Exercises For The Most Common And Debilitating Sports Injuries
As an amateur athlete, you are subject to a wide range of potentially serious sports injuries. The following are among the most common. Thankfully, most of them are easily treatable via simple exercise rehabilitation programs or basic medical procedures.
Torn ACL
In professional sports, a torn ACL usually means the end of the season for that player. When this knee ligament tears, you lose a lot of stability and are in an incredible amount of pain. Treatment options vary, depending on the severity of the injury.
Sometimes, physical rehabilitation programs are all that's necessary to get it back into shape. These programs include a wide range of exercises including:
- Glute sets
- Hamstring curls
- Straight leg raises
- Quad sets
- Heel slides
Unfortunately, serious injuries, or those aggravated by knee issues such as osteoarthritis or previous injuries, usually require ACL reconstruction surgery. This treatment will rebuild your ligaments and restore normal stability and strength to them.
Tennis Elbow
Although it most commonly plagues tennis players, tennis elbow can occur in any athlete who doesn't take care of their elbow. It is essentially a serious strain that can make bending your elbow impossible without feeling serious pain.
There are several at-home treatments you can utilize to immediately reduce the pain of tennis elbow. Start by icing it for 10–15 minutes at a time and then warming it. Taking aspirin can also help reduce the swelling.
Sometimes, exercises like wrist extension, forearm supination, and finger extensions can be utilized to stretch and strengthen the muscles around the elbow and help alleviate pain. If the pain sticks around longer than a few days or gets worse, splints for the wrist and elbow can be used. Corticosteroid injections and surgery may also be possible.
However, the best way to avoid this problem is simple prevention.Try to keep your wrist straight whenever you play tennis: improper technique is often a major contributing factor to this problem.
Achilles Tendon
The Achilles tendon helps support your leg during routine athletic endeavors. When it ruptures, you're in for some serious pain. Surgery is often necessary to fix this injury: surgeons try to repair any tears or structural damage by applying sutures to the torn tendon segments and tying them together.
Unfortunately, you have to take it pretty easy after the surgery. Most surgeries require a cast for 4–8 weeks to prevent injuries. However, some doctors are now pushing for a quicker return to activity, to avoid muscle atrophy.
Because Achilles tendon injuries are so serious, there are only a limited number of rehabilitation exercises you can perform on your own. However, soft personal massages of the damaged area as well as calf raises can help alleviate some of the pain and strengthen the damaged tendon.
Sports injuries like these should not be treated lightly. If you think you may have suffered from even a minor variation of these injuries, call a doctor like Conroy Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy immediately.
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