Prehabilitation for Sports Related Injuries

How to Prevent Sports Injury Through Prehabilitation Services

It is known that exercising enhances both physical and mental health, but the real question is – when do its effects actually start making a change in your body? The answer is a quite relieving and studies have shown that as little as one carefully planned and dosed training session can significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack! That is, if you remain consistent and attend your workouts continuously.

Here at Evolve, we can give you the opportunity to prevent things like this from happening. Whether it’s a heart condition, or a common sports related injury like tears or muscle pulls, by conducting prehabilitation exercises you can lessen your chances of an injury. Better safe than sorry, believe me!

Why would you need prehab?

Unlike rehabilitation which represents physical therapy after a certain injury or operation, prehab consists of well-structured and supervised exercises that ameliorate the outcome of a surgery, or lower the risk of training accidents of players on the field. That kind of preparation can be beneficial to your recovery, whatever situation you’re in. Leave your excuses at home, because here at Evolve physical therapy in Brooklyn, we can give you a variety of choices for you to better the odds when it comes to your health.

The Benefits of Prehab Exercises

Physical therapy prior to intense exercise or any other medical procedure can be a crucial step in preventing injuries. I always say that in order for a professional athlete to endure the enormous stress they put on their body daily, they primarily need to be functional and have a healthy postural status. Same goes for everyone else, even if they aren’t in that kind of situation. Whether you need surgery, or you just want to participate for your overall well-being. I myself, along with my team of highly experienced physical therapists here at Evolve, can guide you through a wide range of exercises that will help you prevent accidents such as:

Prehab for Knee Injuries

Injuries of the knee joint are one of the most common among professional athletes, and in many cases very dangerous because they can easily end their career. However, they can happen to anyone, even if they don’t play a professional sport. At Evolve we like to do things strategically and that means approaching the issue from every possible angle, in order to prevent these knee injuries. Our primary goal is to strengthen the muscles surrounding the knee, meaning every one that produces knee flexion and extension - mainly quadriceps and biceps femoris muscle, along with other muscles that contribute to overall stability of the joint. The goal is that after you go through our treatment you will be able to easily perform every movement in the knee. We want to make sure that your full range of motion has been restored, and that it remains stable throughout every activity.

Prehabilitation for Cycling Injuries

Prehabilitation is a fantastic method for preventing injury while cycling. Cycling is a beautiful sport, and I personally love it very much. However, there is one thing we should all have in mind when we think of going cycling - it is a highly repetitive sport. In order for us to be able to keep pedaling on and on, we have to engage in this sort of activity well prepared. That means strengthening and conditioning muscles that stabilize joints and take all the impact of those high repetitions. Mainly we mean your hips, knees, and wrists. Not only do they need good support, but you must also be aware of all the other complications that can occur because of an uncomfortable, non-physiological position when sitting on a bike. Our team can conduct different training and physiotherapy sessions that will prevent pain in your cervical and thoracic spine, prevent injuries of ligaments surrounding lower extremity joints, and most importantly to help you be able to enjoy cycling as long as possible without feeling any discomforts!

Shoulder pain, Muscle Tears, Pulls and Other Sports Related Injuries

Shoulder injuries are one of the most common ones in sports that mainly require usage of the arms, such as basketball or baseball. Basketball players often have problems with shoulder pain when lifting arms above their head, and why wouldn’t they feel pain when this puts the shoulder joint in a very non-anatomic position? On the other hand, baseball players need to have strong enough posterior muscles of the shoulder joints, in order to avoid tearing of ligaments, glenoid labrum, and more. Besides these, all the other sports carry their risks, but let’s stick to most common cases.

If you feel pain, or if you suffered a muscle tear in the past, you shouldn’t let it happen to you again. There are ways we can help you ensure that you don’t. By performing functional movement patterns as an element of carefully planned and supervised physical therapy, you can achieve the proper posture, stability and overall functionality. Whether we talk about shoulder prehab exercises, or exercises that give you stability and strength in every other critical joint. Undergoing prehabilitation therapy like we offer here at Evolve might just be the missing element for you to have complete enjoyment when participating in sports activities.

What are the main goals of prehabilitation?

Sometimes the external forces that affect our body in various physical activities can be inevitable and dominant, and there is just nothing we can do to stop an injury from happening. This is very common with contact sports. However, I think that in many cases we alone are most responsible for our injuries. All too often we engage in activities while being inadequately prepared!

When I say inadequately, I mean we usually skip the warm up. In my opinion, this is a terrible decision. A moderate warm up will increase the blood flow through our muscles and make them more flexible, decreasing the risk of an injury. Simply put, a 10-minute

Investment of your time can save you weeks of taking painkillers!

Your muscles need to be well conditioned for every specific type of sport. If you jog every morning and then suddenly you decide you want to play football, you will have a major risk of hurting yourself. Every sport has its demands, and if you doubt your strength or overall stability that’s needed for it, undergoing prehab won’t bring you any harm.

Last but not least, you can always give your muscles a nice good stretch whenever you can. Whether you just finished working out, or right before you hit the pillow. Remember, everything you do to contribute to your overall well-being makes you maybe one step ahead of an unpleasant surprise. If you would like to learn more about our prehab services, feel free to give our team a call today.

How Can Physical Therapy Help My Arthritis?

By Nick Mazzone, PT, DPT, CSCS

What is Osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is a major cause of chronic pain and disability in our society today. People with arthritis typically report deep, aching pain in the joints affected as well as stiffness and inability to get up and get right out of bed in the morning. The most common treatments for this painful condition include cortisone injections aimed at decreasing inflammation, over-the-counter NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), and knee replacement surgery once the condition significantly worsens.

What is going on in my joints that causes this pain?

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition that leads to wearing away of the outer layers of cartilage and bone as you can see in the image above. This causes an inflammatory process to be induced by the body which leads to swelling, increased sensitivity to touch and pressure, and pain. On an X-ray, you will see decreased space between the bones and potentially bone spurs, which the body lays down in response to excess pressure in the area. This inflammatory condition typically leads to inactivity, which then leads to decreased range of motion along with muscle weakness.

What will physical therapy accomplish?

The hallmarks of arthritis include joint stiffness, swelling, muscular weakness, and pain. In physical therapy, your therapist will prescribe specific exercises that will help improve range of motion, and therefore, stiffness, as well as exercises for strengthening the surrounding muscle groups. These exercises will also act to help decrease the central nervous system’s hypersensitivity to pressure and touch, which will allow you to perform your daily tasks with much greater ease. Your therapist will also work on improving your patterns of movement in order to ensure that you are decreasing the pressure on your arthritic joints and using the most efficient pattern available to your body. There are also modalities and other methods used that will help to decrease the amount of swelling in the joint, which then leads to decreased pain.

Great. Stronger muscles, improved range of motion. How exactly is this helping my condition?

Good question. I would like to start by saying that there is currently no way to reverse the arthritic condition. That being said, I would like you to consider this example. Think about a stiff and swollen knee joint. When a person bends their knee, the stiffness in the muscles and fibers of the joint force the bones to glide along a smaller surface area. This will eventually lead to more breakdown of the cartilage and outer layers of bone, which means progression of the osteoarthritis. Now imagine we have a knee joint that has been sufficiently stretched and has less swelling. These bones glide in a smoother manner across a larger surface area (due to less range of motion restrictions). Now that the force can be spread evenly across the bony surfaces, there is a much less chance of increasing breakdown of the cartilage and bone.

Strengthening the muscles helps to ensure that while walking or performing other functional daily tasks, the joint is kept in a position that ensures proper alignment and efficiency of muscle function. This formula along with a prescribed home exercise program will prevent progression of the condition and assist in avoiding knee replacement surgery.

Check out this brief video which shows how to utilize a “hip-first pattern” to help offset pressure on the knee joint when bending down and squatting.

For more information or any questions, give us a call at 718-258-3300 or contact us today!

or click here to find out more about physical therapy for arthritis

Nick Mazzone received his doctorate in Physical Therapy from Stony Brook University. He has a strong background in strength and conditioning and aims to bridge the gap between strength training and physical therapy. Nick believes that a lifestyle centered around physical fitness and mental well-being are vital to one’s successes and happiness. For this reason, he educates his patients on pain science and helps empower them and motivate them to reach their goals every day. You can find him at Evolve Physical Therapy in Mill Basin, Brooklyn.