Why is Rehabilitation Important in Sports

Getting injured while playing is the worst nightmare for any professional athlete. Whether you are a professional sportsperson or just play sports as a hobby, getting injuries is stressful. You never know how much time you will have to stay away from your activities during recovery. If an athlete has suffered some serious injury, it is possible that he can no longer participate in professional games and matches. If this happens, stress and depression can affect the overall life of a sportsman. Sports rehabilitation is important to bring such people back to life and sports. Nothing is impossible which is why therapists are working their best to make sure no sports talent is ripped off his chance to play on national and international levels.

What is Sports Rehabilitation

Sports rehabilitation is the process in which the recovery time of a sportsperson is decided after an injury. Depending on the severity of the injury rehabilitation process decides when an athlete can continue his sports practices. Competitive sports require a lot of stressful exercises and activities because of which athletes are more prone to injuries. An athlete must sustain those injuries for coming back to sports for which a rehabilitation program helps. There are different therapies and exercises not only for physical health but also for mental balance and relaxation.

Why Rehabilitation is Important

Every sport has some injury risk associated with it. You can fall from your bicycle in a cycle race, you can twist your ankle in a marathon, you can get hit by the rugby ball or your knee can get fractured during a football match. Sports rehabilitation works to help these injured athletes bring back to their routine after full recovery. The major goal of sports injury rehabilitation is to make sure that the sportsperson does not lose his muscle strength and flexibility, which is why different exercises are inculcated in each recovery session. Physical therapists have come up with a complete step by step procedure to prepare athletes for the ground after the injury.

Stages Of Rehabilitation

There are many ways through which the injury can be recovered, however, Physiotherapy Near Me go gradually step by step so that results are assured. They will help you out and guide you through the complete procedure in which these below-mentioned stages will be followed:

Adequate Protection

The first step is to provide proper protection to the affected or injured area to prevent any further damage. For example, if you have suffered from a fracture or a muscle injury, protecting the area of injury will stop the wounds from getting worse. It will also give your internal system more supportive healing. You feel a lot of inflammation during the first few days of injury, which is why your physiotherapist focuses more on removing the damaged tissues from the rest of the area in the first stage so that the pain doesn’t spread.

Reconditioning

Weight is implied on the affected areas to ease down the muscle stress. This is specifically for muscle injuries where weight is applied according to the condition of the sprain. For example, for leg muscle injury the weight will be more than that of the weight used in a lower limb or arm injury. This stage maintains the muscle strengthen and condition them again by increasing mobility and cardiovascular activity.

Strength And Skills

After the first two stages, your injury is settled down and you have started with light and simple loading. By this stage, your pain is almost gone and you can start serious exercises. Most of the players think that they can continue with their sports at this stage. However, if any of the following is lacking, you are paving ways for your injury to get worse.

• Cardiovascular endurance
• Muscle power
• Balance
• Agility
• Rate of improvement
• Force development
• Muscular endurance

When all these are tested and there is no deficiency left behind, you can move to the next phase that is returning to your routine.

Returning To Sports

In between the third and fourth stage, lies a stage where the sportsperson is mentally prepared to return with the same strength and confidence. Gaining back the physical strength is one thing, but many athletes lose their confidence and ability to perform as well as before because of the gap. After the mental preparation, physical activities such as tune-up events and short marathons are arranged to test the health of the athlete. This is the stage that decides if the athlete is fully prepared to continue his sports.

Injury Prevention

The last stage contains the risk management of any future injury and trains the athlete on how he can play on the safe side. Although physical therapists can never assure that the risk of injury will lower down, injury prevention is just an effort to make the rehabilitation process successful for long-term.