Pass On Injury & Level Up Your Soccer Performance
Scoring Against Injuries: PT for Soccer Players
Tackle Soccer Injuries and Performance with Sports PT
Soccer is a favorite sport among kids, teenagers and adults, worldwide. Hitting the pitch to play a casual game with friends or lining up to start a professional or college match, soccer requires both fitness and skill. Working with a coach is a great way to build more skill and become a competitive player but having a great sports or orthopedic physical therapist on your team is another way to help boost performance and prevent and recover from injuries that can strike without warning.
RECOVER AND REHABILITATE THE RIGHT WAY
Even the best players experience injuries. Unlike a sport like running where you don’t contact other runners much, soccer players face injury risk due to the dynamic and ballistic movements they perform, the surface of the field and the unpredictable behaviors of other players. One of the most important roles that physical therapists play in the management of soccer athletes is helping them recover from injury. Recovering in the right way can make all the difference between returning to full play and sitting out on the sidelines. While soccer players can experience many different types of injuries, some of the most common soccer-related injuries that physical therapists encounter are as follows:
Ligament sprains–ankles, knees, wrist, shoulder, etc
Muscle contusions
Meniscus injuries
Concussions
Turf Toe
Getting immediate advice and intervention is an important strategy for optimal recovery from an injury. Establishing care with a great PT before a big injury strikes will allow you to take action right away. Many players ignore small but recurring aches and pains until they become full-blown injuries but having a PT on your team already means you can bring this to their attention early on. By addressing these small injuries and irritations you reduce the likelihood they will become season-interrupting problems later on.
When injury does occur, you need to make the right choice as to whether you can continue to play, continue to play with modifications or need to cease playing altogether. Through education, training and practice your PT is an excellent resource to guide you through this decision-making process and to advise you on when consulting with a physician or getting imaging is needed. Each type of injury has a unique timeline for recovery and protocol for rehabilitation. The type of rehabilitation needed to return to low impact activity like most daily activities is quite different from that needed to prepare an athlete to return to high level athletics. Working with a physical therapist that understands soccer will help them tailor your rehabilitation plan of care to support return to sport.
TRAINING FOR A SOCCER BODY
There is no doubt that players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Mia Hamm have spent thousands of hours practicing the skills needed to dominate the sport, but their level of fitness and conditioning played an essential role in their ability to play competitively for so long. Soccer, like all sports, imposes unique physical demands on the body. Failing to train the body to withstand the stresses it experiences during practice, game play and training increases the risk of injury significantly and impacts performance.
Physical therapists use their understanding of the unique physiological and anatomical demands of a sport like soccer to train and rehabilitate their athletes. Let’s take a look at the components of fitness and movement that are important for soccer players to maximize performance and decrease injury risk:
Strength: Muscle strength refers to the amount of force a muscle can develop, the amount of force or pressure it can withstand or the amount it can move. Whole body strength is important for soccer players who need to run, jump, change directions quickly and kick a ball powerfully.
Power: Power is a component of muscle performance in which strength or muscle force is developed rapidly in order to perform ballistic movements like passing a ball to another player sprinting down the field or diving across the goal to block the ball. A player that is strong but slow will be at a disadvantage in many situations.
Flexibility: Appropriate muscle flexibility is essential for players to move through their full ranges of motion without straining muscles. Lack of appropriate muscle flexibility can increase the risk of injuries like hamstring and adductor strains.
Joint Mobility: Joint mobility is important for the execution of movements requiring more extreme ranges of motions.
Joint Stability: The ability to control joint position while rapidly changing directions or during unexpected contact from another player, for example, is important to help prevent sprains and strains.
Proprioception and Coordination: Joint proprioception and neuromuscular coordination are important components of the skills required to be a great player and to minimize injury risk.
Muscle Endurance: Strong muscles with poor endurance will have difficulty performing at a high level for the duration of practice or game play and injury risk increases as muscles fatigue.
As important as rehabilitation from an injury is, preventing injuries in the first place is equally as important. Physical therapists use their knowledge of components of movement and fitness that were outlined above to screen athletes and identify impairments that increase their risk for injuries and may be compromising performance. This type of athlete screen allows for a proactive approach to injury prevention and athlete development. Once they have identified these impairments your physical therapist can prescribe a series of treatments and exercises that you can implement in off-season, pre-season and/or during the regular season to support performance and minimize injury risk. By taking this proactive step you can get ahead of potential injuries and you may even see your performance improve.
CHOOSE EVOLVE PHYSICAL THERAPY
At Evolve PT we want to get you strong and healthy so that you can get back to playing the game you love. We apply an individualized approach to athlete assessment and rehabilitation and our goals are to help you become the best player you can be. If you are a soccer player recovering from an injury or wondering if there are steps you can take to prevent one in the future, call Evolve PT today.
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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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