Whether you’re an adult who loves to play sports, or your children play sports, it’s important to remember that we all need to do certain things to help our body along the way, and to keep our injury levels at a minimum.
We know too well that being injured is frustrating and stops us doing the very thing we love. It then has that dreaded knock on effect on our day-to-day activities and overall well-being. If you’re reading this and nodding your head, you’ll agree exercise and playing team sports has so many more benefits than just keeping fit.
We love to see you perform at your best on the field and off the field!
We’ve come up with some easy-to-follow tips so that you can better take care of yourself and your body along your sports journey. After all, we only get one body and it’s our job to take great care of it.
7 Techniques to Minimise Your Risk of Sports Injuries
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Warm up
Before you start any exercise, you should always warm up properly. Getting your heart rate up slowly as well as stretching your muscles allows blood flow to increase throughout your body lowering your chances of pulling any muscles. Warming up your body plays a significant part in injury prevention as well as enhancing your performance and intensity factor once you get going.
An easy warm up to start with could be some simple side bends, arm rotations and leg swings to get the body moving.
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Cool down
A significant cool down helps to regulate your body and heart rate back to a normal functioning position. A cool down routine should include stretching similarly to your warmup routine, holding stretches for a little longer to really stretch out those muscles and to continue the flow of oxygen to them helps you cool down slowly. Stretching will also help you with your range of motion and over time help to increase your muscle performance.
The cool down is equally as important as the warmup!
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Strengthen up your muscles
Adding in extra activities to help strengthen your muscles is a super effective way to increase your performance as well as add to injury prevention.
Additional activities like cardio training, strength training, mobility training and increased flexibility training will all help to assist you in injury prevention. It’s all about moving that little bit more, refining your technique, building that muscle to exercise safely.
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Strapping
If you know you have certain areas that are a little more vulnerable than others, strapping is a great way to assist in protecting them. Having the area properly strapped beforehand can help prevent any further damage and help that area feel a little more supported during exercise.
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Wearing the right things
Having well fit shoes is a great start to any physical activity. Other things like mouth guards, protective clothing or padding (if your sport requires) are important factors that can help to minimise your risk of injury.
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Take breaks when your body needs them
There is power in the pause. Understanding your body and when it needs to rest is important. To be able to perform well, we need to rest our bodies. This is a little harder to try and teach children but learning to rest helps our bodies in recovery to be able to get back out and play.
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Stay hydrated
Dehydration causes your body to fatigue as well as cramp and cause extra stress. Staying adequately hydrated helps you prevent injury that can be caused by cramps and fatigue. When the weather is warmer, it’s important to keep up the fluids and make sure we remind our children to drink plenty of water.
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