The loss of Derrick Rose, sidelined with a meniscus tear, knocks a big hole in this year’s basketball season. And the injury to the Chicago Bulls’ star is only the latest in a series of injuries besetting the sport.
A rotator cuff injury took the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant out in January. The list goes on, and it reaches far deeper than the elite ranks of NBA pros.
Continue reading NBA Misses at Shot at Preventing Basketball Injuries
By Bert Mandelbaum
The right exercises could prevent most basketball injuries.
We know this both from studies on basketball injuries and on injuries in other sports. Continue reading How to Prevent Basketball Injuries
When University of Connecticut star Ryan Boatright rolled his ankle Sunday, he was treading on a well-worn trail. About 600,000 basketball players get hurt so badly they end up in U.S. emergency rooms each year. That’s more than any other sport.
But a close look at how basketball players get hurt shows that many of the injuries could be avoided.
Recognizing concussion symptoms may save your life.
For generations, athletes took blows to the head and kept right on playing. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the game. Coaches, teammates and fans may depend on you. But getting hit again and again can permanently damage your brain. It can even kill you. Continue reading Recognize Concussion Symptoms
When U.S. national soccer team striker Jozy Altidore clutched his thigh and fell to the ground in the World Cup last month, physical therapist Holly Silvers thought once again of Russian hamstring exercises.
No less than three other members of the team (Fabian Johnson, Matt Besler and Deandre Yedlin) reportedly suffered injuries to this muscle group in the back of the thigh during the World Cup. Silvers, who helped develop the FIFA11+ injury prevention program for soccer’s governing body, tells me most of these injures could be prevented. Besides the pain these players experienced, the injuries literally hamstrung the team in a series of tough matches.
And it’s not only soccer players who suffer these injuries. Four Major League Baseball players (Munenori Kawasaki, Alberto Callaspo, Chris Dickerson and Shane Victorino) are currently on the disabled list because of hamstring injuries, according to ESPN. In fact hamstring strains afflict participants in just about every sport that involves running.
Two studies presented Sunday in Seattle at the American Orthpaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) show just how effective a few simple exercises can be against this type of injury.
One was Silvers’ controlled study on the FIFA11+. Previously her group showed the program could cut overall injuries by about half in female soccer players, but data on specific individual injuries were mostly not significant. In this new study she and her colleagues showed, among other things, that the program cut hamstring injuries by more than two thirds among over 1700 male NCAA soccer players.
Continue reading New Studies Show How to Prevent Hamstring Injuries
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
If you’ve been watching the World Cup, you may have noticed that the best soccer players often go airborne. That’s been true for a number of years, as you can see in this video of the top World Cup headers.
But what goes up must come down, and how you land can determine how long you can continue playing. Too often soccer players hit the ground in a stiff, awkward position that damages their knees and other body parts.
You can prevent that with jumping exercises . Not only that, but these exercises can improve your Continue reading Increasing Power and Speed for Soccer Players
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