Injuries are common while participating in organized sports, competitions, training exercises, or fitness activities.
Poor training methods, not warming-up, lack of conditioning, incorrect gear or equipment, fatigue, overuse and dehydration are a few of the causes of sports injuries.
Physical rehabilitation is the most common way to treat a sports injury as it helps rebuild strength and movement in parts of the body after an injury. Therapy can also help with prevention and pain management in order to lessen the damage and the possibility of recurring problems.
At Oklahoma Physical Therapy, our physical therapists are trained to help patients recover following an injury. As part of our physical therapy treatments, we will work with you to design a specific treatment program to address your needs that may consist of exercises, stretches, and various techniques using specialized equipment along with teaching you exercises that you can complete at home.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the most common sports injuries include sprains, strains, Achilles tendinitis, fractures, knee injuries, rotator cuff injuries, dislocations, swollen muscles and shin splints.
Since athletes participate in a wide spectrum of sports and each sports has its own injury risks, it is important that each patient be examined based on the particular sport that caused the injury. Such sports like golf, baseball pitching, and tennis use a repetitive motion such as loading, swinging, throwing and a follow through motion. While these sports are different they have the ability to create the same stress on certain body parts.
At Oklahoma Physical Therapy it is extremely important for us to know how the injury happened, the injured area and the extent of the injury before treating it.
We recommend that you stop playing or exercising if you experience any pain. Injuries are time dependent, which means that the normal healing process follows a pattern of phases. Each of these phases have different treatment programs and our physical therapists will accurately diagnose each phase and create a treatment plan based on the patient and the stage of the injury.
Many minor injuries can heal with time and by adhering to the P.R.I.C.E. (Protection-Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation) method. This method allows for healing and recovery to take place while controlling inflammation.
For those with more of a severe injury, we advise you to stop all further activities and do what you can to immobilize the area. Treatments for moderate to severe injuries consist of range-of-motion exercises, cold/heat therapy, compression therapy and manual therapy.
At Oklahoma Physical Therapy our main focus is to treat your injury but to also provide prevention education. With proper warm-up and stretching some sports injuries can be prevented. Also, visiting with one of our trained physical therapists before the sports injury becomes severe can be extremely important. We will examine the areas that need to be addressed and teach you various exercises or stretches that can help prevent the injury from becoming severe.