How do you balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them? What principles have worked best in practice?

Question

Nick Hadinger · Answer

I'm not quite sure what this question is asking, but how do you balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them and what principles have worked best in practice? So I think that what this is saying is, you know, when should you go about treating an injury versus being kind of in the preventative injury realm? And in my opinion, if you're involved in any kind of a sport, you should be working with a PT on a semi-regular basis, at least to continue to work on some of your asymmetries and a lot of your weaknesses, really. I think that it's not uncommon for people to feel little niggles here and there that aren't necessarily a sign of injury. It maybe is related to the progressive overload and their body's response to it in some way, but it's not necessarily a sign that we need to change anything about the training. Maybe we need some more recovery modalities in there, but I think that in general, everyone should have some kind of a prehab prescription program that they're kind of working towards every week, but then managing their recovery appropriately when those signs of injury do come up.

Dr. Brian Cunningham · Answer

How do you balance seeing signs of an injury with actually preventing the injury and what principles have worked in the past? I assume that you're an athlete and from this question more than likely you haven't worked with a professional before. What we do as physical therapists or performance specialists is we regularly look at our athletes and monitor them whether it's range of motion, strength, performance based testing. So we get a baseline measure and then with training and competition we are regularly looking in and checking in with the athlete to determine what the positive or negative effects are on their body and mind. And so with that then we know how to address it. But prior hand you should be doing some prehab exercises or activation drills based on the assessment at the start of the season and working systematically through a program to progress you in order to help reduce any pain or prevent injury. Hopefully that answers your question. If not, please shoot me another question. Thanks for asking.

Jim Heafner · Answer

This is such a great question because it hits right at the heart of the complexity of the problem. And so when someone comes in and I see a faulty movement pattern or a position that just tells me that the person is sort of overloading certain tissue, we don't always know that that's going to cause injury or pain because pain is very complex, it's very individualized. But the way that I approach that is if someone comes in and they, I sort of look at the precursor signs before an injury happens. So oftentimes if someone is using a faulty movement pattern, they'll report some stiffness somewhere. So if they're biking and they say their knee feels stiff after doing the bike, they're probably pulling through their quad in a certain way or not engaging the hip in a way that puts more strain across the knee. If someone's doing a military press and they feel sort of a pinch at the end range of the motion, that's another example. So the principle that I work on is trying to get people to be more in tune with the signs and symptoms around how they're feeling to then ultimately avoid that problem.

Lisa Pataky, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS · Answer

How do you balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them and what principles have worked best in practice? I think you're kind of asking about injury risk reduction versus when you actually have an injury. In my setting, working with athletes, we do a lot of monitoring and assessments throughout the season so that we can hopefully try and capture something coming on before it actually happens. So for instance, if we look at an athlete's hamstring strength every single week and we're seeing greater than a 10% drop in their strength, one week we remeasure and it's the same, then we're going to intervene and try and do extra hamstring strengthening at that time to help reduce the risk of actually getting a hamstring injury. But I think that if you are an athlete, you're probably doing some form of correctives or a prehab or whatever you want to call it that's kind of working on different things that you need to work on at all times. So in my setting, we take a lot of measurements at the beginning of the year and then we tailor different programs for each athlete based on what they need to work on the most. Range of motion, different strength deficits, asymmetries, whatnot, and then we reevaluate those to see how they're doing, if we need to continue with that or change to another plan. So hopefully that answered your question a little bit.

Kate Edwards, PT, DPT, OCS · Answer

Hey everyone, Kate Edwards here. The question I'm answering is how do you balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them? What principles have worked best in your practice? So again, education is key. Understanding what causes overtraining. So being able to notice your signs that your body gives you that say you might be getting too tired or you're worn down. So most people have typical signs like their knee might start hurting or they're really tired and they can't focus or they get sick to their stomach or a sinus infection. Sometimes those signs are really good cues and they're things that your body are trying to tell you to slow down and back off. And then when it comes to practice if I see things coming up with an athlete, I treat it because I can since I'm in cash practice. So usually if there's any tightnesses or muscle imbalances or weaknesses, we treat those before they become a problem on a wellness basis. So it's hard to balance, but if you really understand your warning signs as an athlete, that's really important. And then finding someone who can treat you from a wellness perspective that won't over treat you but will treat you as needed or say hey come in let me check it out. And then if you don't need them, they also let you know.

John Sinclair · Answer

How do I balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them and what principles have worked best in practice? So this is one principle that I have followed my entire career, especially since I got involved with the Gray Institute and PTA Global, and that is this concept of sphere of function. And so what I mean by sphere of function is if I was to take your body's ability to move, and within time and space I have a degree to which I move very well or not so well. And in particular movements you might find that you move better to your left in one particular movement than you do to your right. Or maybe you don't move as high or as low as you can on one side to the other. And in that case what we would say is that you have a bit of it not quite a full sphere, you have a distorted sphere. And that happens when we play sports and we're doing the same sport over and over and over again. We tend to get proficient in one direction but maybe not the other. And so the goal I always do when I'm working with my clients is try to balance that sphere out. So the way in which I start is I if there's one that doesn't move quite as well, I ask the one that's moving better to just back off so that we can create good rhythm, coordination, timing, and symmetry. If I can create that in all three dimensions then that will prevent injuries.

Swimming

Strength

Triathlon

Photography

Track & Field

Nutrition

Physical Therapy

Running

Pets

Cycling

Podcasting

HealthCare

Musculoskeletal

Hockey

First Responders

Integrative Medicine

Chiropractic

Cross Country Skiing

Adaptive Sports

Mental Health

Climbing

Surfing

Tennis

Military

Mind Body

Scholars

Criminal Justice

Liquor

Golf

CrossFit

Soccer

Pickleball

Hunting

Public Speaking

Venture Capital

"How do you balance seeing signs of injury with actually preventing them? What principles have worked best in practice?"