How Does a Physical Therapist Assist You in Sports Rehabilitation?
When it comes to any sport, the risk of injury is always there. Injuries could keep you from playtime. Minor and major injuries are part of sports activity. If you have an injury, it is essential to treat it right away to prevent further damage. Here comes the role of sports rehabilitation.
Sports rehabilitation is a type of physical therapy that treats individuals of all ages who have an injury, illness, or musculoskeletal system pain.
Sports rehabilitation helps maintain health and fitness by using exercise, movement, and therapeutic intervention. It also helps you recover from injury and reduce pain. Lawton Physical Therapy focuses on biomechanics and exercise rehabilitation. Its main purpose is to return patients to their highest level of function.
What is Sports Rehabilitation?
Sports rehabilitation is one of the popular and multidisciplinary approaches to treating injuries so that athletes can have normal pain-free movement. The Multidisciplinary team of sports rehabilitation consists of highly trained professionals such as physical therapists, athletic trainers, chiropractors, and massage therapists. Whether the athlete is amateur or professional, the main goal is to return to pre-injury activities.
Sprains and strains are common body injuries treated by the sports rehabilitation team. A sprain happens when a ligament is stretched or torn. On the other hand, a strain happens when a muscle is stretched too much or torn.
Sports rehabilitation can also treat fractures, arthritis, joint replacements, and generalized pain issues.
Principle of Sports Rehabilitation:
1. Pain Management Treatment:
Rehabilitation commonly starts with a pain management treatment program that a licensed physical therapist provides. They utilize some modalities such as ice or heat application, ultrasound, and electrical stimulation for pain relief.
Ultrasound is a supportive device to increase circulation to the affected or injured area, which helps in speeding up the healing procedure. It can also decrease the edema or swelling causing pain. Electrical stimulation utilizes electric waves that penetrate the muscle and help relieve pain. It is commonly known as TENS, or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.
2. Recovering Sports-Specific Movements:
For the last phase of rehabilitation, Lawton Physical Therapy will have you perform exercises that simulate the particular movements you’d use when competing in your sport. You will not return to action until you can perform all the movements you could before the injury took place. After they’ve finished this step, our patients should feel confident that they can start to compete without fear of injury.
3. Stretching and Exercise:
The main components of sports rehabilitation are stretching and exercise routine. Stretching helps the muscles reduced by injury or pain to regain their normal length to optimize pain-free motion.
But it is stated that exercise routines can hold on to things like strength, endurance, flexibility, and balance to enhance performance. The ultimate body progression of the exercise routine is the utilization of functional exercises to assist the athlete to his former performance level. Functional exercises are often sport-specific.
4. Injury Prevention:
Athletic trainers can also be an essential part of the healing process and the prevention of further injury. They often can provide immediate intervention for an injury. A massage therapist can supply the manual methods to help in the recovery of movement and the pain relief needed for optimal performance in the sport.
5. Use of Chiropractors:
It is known as the health care professional tool that most professionals use in their journey. It helps in the expansion of the spine and manual soft tissue techniques. Nowadays, many rehabilitation programs use chiropractors. Many chiropractors are also trained in workout and stretching techniques. It helps in the recovery of pre-injury performance.
Firstly, sports rehabilitation starts with the therapy of acute injury. It then follows the athlete through every stage of recovery. Rehabilitation is a comprehensive healing program that focuses on every aspect of pain-free, effective, sports-specific movement, from pain relief to optimizing muscle strength and life to returning to pre-injury performance to injury prevention.
How does Oklahoma Physical Therapy Assist You?
Athletes, by nature, generally want to push themselves to achieve new goals. Normally, many Olympic sprinters take on the slopes at the winter games, and college athletes achieve national titles in multiple sports for this same reason.
Moreover, our Oklahoma Physical Therapy specialists are movement experts who can help you prevent injuries and improve your technique. A few of the biggest advantages of working with a physical therapist for your sport include:
1. Developing healthy habits:
Oklahoma Physical Therapy is a great resource to have when focusing on increasing strength and muscular functionality, as they can help you improve in all aspects of health and fitness. They can help you work on general wellness goals and physical goals. For example, regular exercise, having a healthy diet, and a strong focus on hydration are basic in improving your physical fitness level.
2. Refocusing strengths:
Many parts of the body can support each other, and strengthening one can assist with the function of another. Oklahoma Physical Therapy can help you focus on increasing your strength in areas that you may not have considered. Rather than jumping immediately into a new form of activity, it makes sense to teach your body to react to the new form of stimulation by boosting your muscular strength and range of motion.
3. Overcoming injuries:
Strength and conditioning strategies are some of the best ways to overcome an injury as well as to find relief for your pain. Each therapy is designed particularly to your requirements and the condition of your injury, including exercises and strength-building activities that are unique to your healing.
When participating in sports conditioning or pre-season training sessions, your goals never have to be definite. Physical Therapy can assist you in achieving the height of your achievement in one area of your sport and then help you tackle the conference of another.
Does Physical Therapy Overcome Sports Injuries?
Physical therapy helps an athlete to rebuild strength and movement after an injury through different exercises, stretches, and specialized techniques. It can also assist an athlete in managing pain and preventing avoidable injury in the future.
It Can Increase Body Mobility:
Physical Therapy assesses your mobility to focus on areas of improvement when your pain has lessened. This contains problematic areas such as the neck, shoulder, back, and hips. Any unexamined joint limitations can negatively affect all factors of your movement and enhance the chances of future injury. Working on the proper form through dedicated physical therapy will help you move more smoothly overall.
It Can Refined Flexibility:
Poor training methods, ineffective warm-up, and lack of conditioning are a few of the main reasons for sports injuries. Knowing how to work on your body and when you have reached your limit are important skills to keep in mind during your recovery. Your physical therapist will assess your flexibility by evaluating and examining key muscle group issues.
It Can Eliminate Sports Pain:
Knowing when to work through the pain in a controlled setting is ideal for relearning your body’s limits. Serious injuries can have lasting effects on athletes well after their surgery has healed.
Your physical therapy sessions and treatment may consist of working with a team of therapists who specialize in a list of healing methods to help best treat your recovery.
It Can Increase Body Strength:
Working with Oklahoma Physical Therapy to regain full functionality of the injured area includes rebuilding strong muscles. This is done by honing in on your goals and areas that need improvement through a therapy plan that best supports you.
Your muscles work in a chain reaction to give the most powerful force. If one or multiple of these areas are weaker than others, your body will try to compensate, ultimately resulting in injury. Due to rest or possible casts and braces, the muscles surrounding your injury will be weaker and need rehabilitative conditioning.
Physical therapy will not only get you back to where you were before your injury but also provide you with the need to avoid reoccurrence.
Final Verdict:
Whether you’re going to recover from an injury or trying to strengthen your skills, working with Lawton Physical Therapy can help you reach your peak performance. Their dedicated team will not only help you achieve your goals but also assist you in developing new ones.
Don’t hesitate to request an appointment today if you are interested in working with one of our licensed physical therapists for sports conditioning or pre-season training!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
How is rehabilitation effective in games and sports?
Rehabilitation is a way to rebuild your power, strength, flexibility, and endurance after having a sports injury. As critical as rehabilitation is after an injury, it is often unnoticed. This could cost a person the full recovery they need to get back to their sport and prevent further injury.
How important is physical rehabilitation in sports injuries?
Physical rehabilitation is a process of healing from sports injuries. Physical therapy helps to regain strength and movement in parts of the body after having an injury. It can also help a person manage pain, and simultaneously, it can help to prevent permanent damage or recurring problems.
How can physical therapy help athletes?
Physical therapy includes different types of exercises, stretches, and specialized techniques which help an athlete rebuild strength and movement after an injury. It can also help an athlete manage pain and prevent avoidable damage in the future.
How does sports rehab differ from physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy aims to rehabilitate patients to allow them to feel comfortable and manage daily life, while Sports therapy concentrates more on whether the patient has returned to or can maintain the required physical level for whatever sporting activity they would like to carry out.
Is sports therapy the same as sports massage?
When it comes to Sports Massage, it is a single element of Sports Therapy. Level 3 Sports Massage focuses on primary massage techniques performed on ‘no-pathological, or ‘uninjured’ tissue.