Injuries can occur in any sporting activity, and sports rehab is very important to an athlete’s sports life. Sports rehab can help an athlete to regain their previous level of fitness, or to improve their current level of fitness and more benefits that sports rehab has to offer.
Sports Injuries, Sprains, Strains and Muscle Spasms
Your muscles and joints can suffer a great deal of pain if you fall prey to a sprain, strain or muscle spasm from exercises or an active lifestyle. If you know what causes these problems, and know how to prevent them, you can save yourself a lot of discomfort with these helpful tips for sports rehab. Your chiropractor can help you by correcting defects that cause your muscles to protect you by going into a painful spasm and focus on your sports rehab.
Sprain
You are hiking and step on a rock. Your ankle turns over and you feel a wrenching pain, but can still walk back to camp. The real pain comes later. This is injury is a sprain.
A sprain occurs when the joint is forced to go beyond its normal range of motion. The ligament fibres overstretch and tear. This often happens with sudden twisting in active sports. With a sprain, the joint can still function, even though minute ligament tears leak blood into the tissue surrounding the joint, causing swelling and discomfort as symptoms of an injury.
Back sprains are usually severe and some of these can be treated through sports rehab. Pain and motion in the lower back (called sciatica) will often cause a muscle spasm. Acute sprains require the attention of a doctor to help with pain relief. Chiropractic soft tissue treatment for sciatica can help you in your recovery on the road to being pain-free for sports rehab patients too.
To treat a sprain, your doctor will want to rest your leg and wrap it in compression. Ice can also be used for soft tissue treatment in the acute phase of injury to reduce swelling. Stay home while you are in recovery as your health is a top priority during sports rehab too.
Strain
If a muscle or tendon was injured when you stepped on that rock, you experienced a strain. Strains are not as serious as sprains. They often happen when you neglect to warm up your muscles before using them. Chronically strained muscles or ligaments of your body can result from years of tension or misuse. Sports rehab can improve the symptoms of a strain for patients.
Spasm
You’ve been driving for two hours. You turn and reach for your hat in the back seat and whammy. Your lower back muscles on one side rebel and clamp down into a spasm.
A spasm is a sudden, forceful and sustained muscle contraction. It is usually caused by direct trauma to the muscle, excessive exercise or chronic strain. You can tell when your muscle is in spasm. It bulges and is hard to the touch because of the pain. The muscle is painful and feels tied in a knot. When you have a muscle spasm, all the fibres contract. With normal movement, only some of the fibres contract.
Muscles do two things. They contract and they relax. Muscles around the spine add protection. If you overwork them, the message from the nervous system to the muscle is to contract and protect from an injury. If something is wrong with the discs or facet joints, muscles go into spasms to hold everything in place, preventing further damage to the spine. A muscle in spasm serves as a splint, restricting a range of motion and friction upon joints. The protective spasm can be chronic to a person. It can even be a cause of scoliosis and abnormal spinal curvature.
Chiropractic care can help patients reduce the pain and tightness associated with scoliosis. Bracing may be of benefit in some young patients with moderate scoliosis to prevent further curvature as rehabilitation. There are many ways to treat this condition but surgery should be a last resort if all other measures have failed. Make an appointment with your health care therapist at a clinic and your chiropractor to determine the root cause.
What You Can Do
- Treat your muscles with the care and respect they deserve for overall good health and wellness.
- Keep them flexible with daily slow stretching.
- Check with your chiropractor during your appointment to correct any defects in joint mobility which might be causing your muscles to go into protective spasms from your sports rehab.
- Warm-up your muscles and joints before exercise for safety.
- Stretch them out when your exercising is complete to achieve good health.