Bullet-Proofing Your Return to Sport
The time has finally come to lace up your boots, dust off your kit and hit the pitch – the sporting season is making its return! BUT, what have you been doing in the last few months to make sure your return is not cut short due to an injury? We know you want to make sure that you can play out the full (but shortened) season. So, here are our 6 tips to bullet-proof your return to sport!
We want your return to sport to be smooth sailing, and long lasting. We have been working behind the scenes to design our ‘COVID Prepped to Play’ program to help you achieve exactly this. The 6 components of our COVID Prepped to Play program are outlined below.
LOW AEROBIC HEART RATE TRAINING (LAHRT)
Low-intensity exercise is imperative for building a strong foundation. After having an extended period of time off, you need to start from the beginning and build. LAHRT has been shown to assist with increasing health, endurance, ability to improve your fitness and most importantly, using your body’s energy resources effectively. The key to low aerobic heart rate training is to keep the pace slow enough to stimulate the health benefits of an active lifestyle without putting a huge strain on your body. It is recommended to keep your heart rate at no more than 70% of your maximum heartrate and can be completed from 30 minutes to two hours or more.
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
Sports injury prevention programs have been shown to reduce the number of injuries, as well as the severity and extent of the injuries. Prevention programs look at modifiable athlete related risk factors such as strength, endurance and balance. They also target environmental risk factors through rule modification and equipment strategies. Each sporting code has its own prevention program which has been specifically designed to address the highest risk factors of that sport. These prevention programs should be completed twice per week. Want to know which program you should do? Ask us!
STRENGTH TRAINING
I love to tell my patients, there’s nothing wrong with getting strong! A strong body is one that is rarely injured. Resistance and strength training (specific to you and your needs) helps strengthen muscle and tendons while increasing the flexibility of ligaments. These factors combined decreases the risk of a muscle, tendon or ligament tear. If there is an imbalance of the antagonist and agonist muscles (e.g the hamstrings and quadriceps), there is an increased risk of injury. It has been shown that strength training can lower the risk of injury by a whopping 68%! If that doesn’t make you want to get strong, I don’t know what will! Strength training should be performed at least twice per week.
INTERVAL AND AGILITY TRAINING
The benefits of interval and agility training in preventing injuries are limitless. Interval and agility training contribute to an increase in linear speed which improve acceleration, top speed, and correct biomechanics. Multi-directional and change of direction training will improve your agility and your acceleration and deceleration mechanics, these are vital to decrease stress related injuries. You should perform your interval and agility training on the same days as your strength training.
SPORTS-SPECIFC DRILLS
Your next step is to start individual sport-specific drills. This is where you start to introduce the ball, or equipment, and complete pivoting, shooting, catching, passing, dribbling or any skills-based moves. Reintroducing these actions prepares your body to perform these movements repetitively, while slowly increasing these stresses on your muscles and joints to decrease the risk of injury.
GAME SIMULATION
You’re one step closer to hitting the pitch – but is your body built for purpose? It’s time to simulate your game. You can’t expect your body to be at its optimal function, and be able to prevent injury if it’s not ready for game situations. Starting by breaking up portions of the game, on a smaller sized field, and slowly increasing to full game play will help decrease your risk of injury when you finally hit the pitch.
For more information on our COVID Prepped to Play program or to have an individualised assessment and program put together for you to bulletproof your return to play please call one of our Physiotherapists on 9873 2770 or book online https://bookings.nookal.com/bookings/location/39XKS.
We are here to Keep you Active for Life!