Sports Injuries

What are the most common sports injuries?

Sports injuries can strike suddenly while you’re engaged in an activity, but they’re more often caused by repetitive movement.

Frequently repeating the same movement puts extra stress on muscles, ligaments, and tendons. If you don’t give the tissues time to rest and heal, the stress can cause tiny tears to enlarge and become inflamed (overuse injuries). 

The most common traumatic and overuse injuries include:

• Broken bones
• Dislocated bones
• Stress fractures
• Sprains and strains
• Rotator cuff and other shoulder injuries
• Jumper’s knee (patellar tendonitis)
• Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear
• Tennis or golfer’s elbow (inflamed tendons)
• Runner’s knee (patellofemoral pain syndrome)
• Achilles tendonitis
• Shin splints

Sports injuries have a higher chance of occurring if you’re improperly trained or have imbalanced body mechanics — problems that improve with physical therapy.

What are the symptoms of a sports injury?

An acute sports injury causes sudden pain, while symptoms appear gradually if you have an overuse injury. You may experience:

• Pain
• Swelling
• Bruising
• Difficulty moving
• Joint instability
• Muscle weakness
• Tingling or electric-shock pain
• Numbness or loss of feeling
• Inability to use the injured arm, hand, leg, or foot

A concussion may cause headaches, confusion, dizziness, and memory loss.

What is the role of physical therapy in sports?

Physical therapy offers more than treatment for sports injuries. You receive comprehensive care at Bowman Physical Therapy, which includes:

• Pre-screening and training for injury prevention
• Rehabilitation after an injury or surgery
• Sport-specific training to improve performance
• Return to play without re-injury

Bowman Physical Therapy has facilities with top-of-the-line rehabilitation and strength-building tools, including Dynatronics workout equipment and a long list of essential rehab equipment.

What physical therapies treat sports injuries?

Your customized physical therapy begins by focusing on reducing pain and inflammation and maintaining range of motion. Over time, your treatment progresses through exercises and treatments to promote flexibility, strength, endurance, power, speed, and agility.

The last part of your therapy is sport-specific, training the unplanned movement patterns you need to perform in your sport.

You can access the expansive gym and receive numerous healing techniques throughout your therapy, from therapeutic massage and other manual therapies to modalities such as ultrasound and light therapy, and electric stimulation.

Call Bowman Physical Therapy or book an appointment online today to learn about its services and start healing from your sports injury.