Physical Therapy for Athletes
Elevate Your Game with a Great Physical therapist
Enhance Sport Performance with PT
Whether you are a weekend warrior or a pro-level athlete, working with a good physical therapist can enhance your performance and reduce your risk of injury. In 2021, 3.2 million people were treated in emergency departments for injuries involving sports and recreational equipment. The activities most frequently associated with injuries are exercise, cycling, and basketball. Amongst the roughly 30 million teens and children who participate in some kind of organized sport here in the United States, more than 3.5 million injuries occur each year which lead to some loss of time participating in the sport.
If you are an athlete or the parent of an athlete, you likely understand the roles of coaches and trainers in sport performance, but do you know how physical therapists can support an athlete?
IT STARTS BEFORE THE INJURY
Most people are familiar with the important role that physical therapists play in injury rehabilitation, but in many cases an athlete can work with a PT well before an injury happens. Here is why you should consider this:
Identification of injury risk factors: working with a physical therapist familiar with your sport can allow you to identify potential injury risk factors well before the injury. This can give you the opportunity to address them. Risk factors that a physical therapist will look for may include imbalances in muscle strength or flexibility, movement coordination, biomechanics, endurance, soft tissue mobility and so forth.
Examine your training plan: While a trainer or coach will likely set up a training plan for an athlete, physical therapists can examine your training plan within the context of your history of past injury, your unique body morphology and any impairments that you currently have. With this information they may make suggestions on what to modify or incorporate into your training to reduce injury and enhance performance. Here are some additional suggestions your PT might make:
Warm-up routine: just like workouts, an individualized warm-up routine will help prepare your body for the forces involved in playing your sport
Cool down routine: cooling down is just as important as warming up and while it can be tempting to skip this part, your PT will help you create a cool down routine that helps you recover faster
Recovery strategies: Stretching, foam rolling, mobility routines are just some of the examples of recovery routines that may help you prevent injury and recover for your next big event
Cross-training: while some people’s bodies can handle high volume of the same activity with minimal injury, other people need to incorporate more cross-training into their training cycle.
Optimize movement patterns: Physical therapists are movement experts and a sport-oriented physical therapist can help you optimize your movement patterns during both training exercises and actual sport performance in order to derive both a performance benefit and an injury-prevention effect. Evaluating run form on a treadmill or jumping mechanics are two examples of how PTs assess movement quality.
Address the niggles right away: Many athletes wait until they have a full-blown injury before working with a physical therapist but there is a great deal of benefit to consulting a PT when they are experiencing the small aches, pains or niggles that usually develop first. Any symptom that is persisting during your training needs to be addressed–the earlier, the better.
Now that you understand many of the benefits to working with physical therapy aside from rehabilitating injuries, you may be wondering when is the best time to consult a PT? The true answer is anytime, but depending on your training cycle and sport seasons throughout the year, a PT may play different roles at different times. An athlete that has a competitive season will also have an off-season.
If you are running races or playing games multiple times a month or even a week, your focus is going to be on maintaining fitness, perfecting sport-specific skills and recovery. During this time a PT can intervene to address minor injuries or niggles, advise you on how to maximize recovery and help optimize movement patterns. During the off-season, athletes should focus on strength, power, speed, and endurance development when accumulated stress and fatigue do not increase the risk for injury or decrease your performance during a game or competition. This is an optimal time to work with a PT on all of the factors listed above so that as you build toward your competitive season or event, you are in the best place possible.
INJURIES DO HAPPEN
Despite best-laid plans, injuries in athletes still occur and working with a physical therapist to heal the injury and minimize the risk for recurrence is a good idea. The goal of injury rehabilitation is to ensure that the injured tissues are ready to withstand the stresses of your sport. These tissues undergo three stages of healing from an acute phase to a chronic phase with each phase having important physiologic processes for healing. Doing too much too soon can re-injure healing tissues and prolong recovery. On the other hand, doing too little at the right time during recovery can also hinder recovery and may predispose the tissues to another injury. It can be tough for an athlete to know how to support an injury through this process but that is why physical therapists exist!
Our team of physical therapists at Evolve will help guide you through the injury recovery process from the earliest moments where protecting the injury is the number one goal, to the late stages where you are performing sport-specific drills and getting back into your prior activity levels. Don’t leave injury rehabilitation and prevention up to chance, let the experts at Evolve help you be a healthier and more resilient athlete!
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About EvolveNY-
Brooklyn's Premier Holistic Physical Therapy Clinics- There’s physical therapy, there’s training, and then there’s EVOLVE. We use the science of biomechanics merged with fitness to help our patients get better and stay better!
First we evaluate, then we heal, then we strengthen our clients so they can reach their goals, feel better, and live happier lives. We do so by utilizing a range of core techniques and specialized treatments to reduce pain, improve mobility, enhance physical strength and deal with the underlying issues, not just the pain itself.
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