Knee injuries may grab the headlines more than any other type of athletic injury, perhaps because they can end an athlete’s career. But ankles get hurt more often, and these injuries can be pretty devastating, too.
Many of the same exercises that we’ve discussed for knee injury prevention can help protect ankles as well.
But you can do some other things to save your ankles. Continue reading Balance Training Reduces Ankle Injury
As a soccer coach, I’ve often yelled at my players to head the ball before it reaches the ground.
And anyone who has watched the World Cup this year knows what a beautiful role heading plays in the game, with Robin van Persie’s goal in the Netherlands vs. Spain game a prime example.
But given the latest medical reports, I’m beginning to wonder how much I should push my team of 16-year-olds to hit the ball with their heads. Today, former U.S. women’s team star Brandi Chastain joined a couple of nonprofit advocacy groups in calling on new rules to restrict the use of heading among young players.
“I believe that the benefits of developing heading skills as children are not worth the thousands of additional concussions that youth soccer players will suffer,” said Chastain in a press release.
Continue reading Does Soccer Heading Cause Brain Damage?
“Can’t I get in shape for soccer just by playing more soccer?” my son asked me recently. It’s a natural assumption. After all, your body does adapt to whatever activity you do.
But the answer is “no.”
Think about it. Professionals — the people who play soccer the most — still get hurt doing it. And these injuries can happen when you are several feet from anyone else. Continue reading How Soccer Players Should Build Muscles
It almost seems if you play soccer long enough, you will hurt a knee.
A lot of players will be missing from the World Cup this year for that reason: Colombia’s star striker Radamel Facao, midfielder Kevin Strootman of the Netherlands, Ecuador’s Segundo Castillo, Germany’s Holger Badstuber and England’sTheo Walcott, to name a few. Continue reading How to Prevent Knee Injuries in Soccer
Irene Davis took off her sandal for me last week. She wriggled her toes. We were in the press room of the American College of Sports Medicine, and she wanted to show me a “doming” exercise you can use to prevent injuries if you run barefoot.
A Doming Video by Richard Blake
Researchers like Davis, the director of the Spaulding National Running Center at Harvard are exploring the pros and cons of running this way.
Most recently, as I reported Monday, a big new U.S. Army study cast doubt on the theory that running barefoot or in minimal shoes might prevent injury by getting people to land on the fronts or middles of their feet instead of the heels.
But I’m not ready to hang up my Vibram FiveFingers, and neither is Davis. Continue reading Despite that Army Study, I Still Like Barefoot Running
TRX vs. weightlifting: which is better?
I came here to the American College of Sports Medicine’s Annual meeting hoping to get answers to such questions. This is the premiere wonkfest for exercise experts, and I wasn’t disappointed. Continue reading Which Is Better? TRX vs. Weightlifting
When I started to write about sports injuries, I envisioned my reader as someone like me: a former college athlete, middle-aged and, well, male. But women immediately started telling me how much they care about the subject. A bookstore owner talked about injuries on her softball team. A literary agent told me upper body training helped her survive a 50-kilometer run. And so on.
The experience reminded me how easy it is to fall into prejudices about who does sports — and who needs help with sports injuries. That thought came to mind again recently when the New Republic quoted Obama saying, “If I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football.” The possibility that his daughters might want to play apparently never occurred to him.
No one I know has struggled with such attitudes more than my friend Jill Caryl Weiner, who seems to have played just about every sport you can name and has wounds to show for it. Even when she could still play football, she sometimes had trouble being taken seriously by her teammates. In the New York Times, she tells the poignant tale of pestering her quarterback to pass to her and then making a diving catch to win the game… only to tear ligaments in her shoulder.
It got worse from there. Continue reading Are Sports Doctors Sexist?
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