How best to treat a sports injury

Sports injuries are common and come in many forms but can be treated if given the correct care. Injuries can be caused by impact, trauma, overuse, or a lack of a sufficient warm-up or cool-down regime. They can affect a variety of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. When you first notice a sports injury, it can be difficult to know whether it’s best to seek professional treatment. You may want to speak to your doctor or investigate other physiotherapy options or your local chiropractors, such as Gainesville chiropractor & chiropractic care. Learn how best to treat a sports injury.

The importance of exercise

Fresh air, activity, and exercise should be part of your daily routine to help you maintain general health and wellbeing. There are many benefits of physical activity and exercise such as managing weight, strengthening your muscles and bones, improving mental health and energy levels, and reducing the risk of disease. To prevent injury, it’s important to start exercising gently to give your body time to adapt. Exercises such as brisk walking, swimming in your Piscines Nautika pool, or gentle yoga are great ways to ease your body into a regular exercise routine. These exercise examples are also great ways to allow the body to recover from more strenuous exercise such as long-distance running or cycling and other physical sports. It’s important to remember to warm up, cool down, and stretch your muscles to prevent future injuries.

Jogging
Photo by Fitsum Admasu on Unsplash

Understanding the injury

When our bodies are damaged through exercise with a muscle or joint injury, they can respond with swelling or tightening. This is completely natural and a result of our body’s self-defense mechanism. Persistent pain in a localized area can result from impact or trauma, but it can also be caused by a response to an issue in another area of the body. Most sports involve contact or impact and quick, stop-start movements, which can cause a lot of force and strain to be inflicted on our muscles, joints, and spine. It’s easy to initially ignore a small niggling pain. Still, this pain could quickly develop into a more serious injury without treatment, inevitably leading to more time off due to injury.

Physiotherapist and a chiropractor – what’s the difference?

Physiotherapy mainly involves rehabilitating muscular and joint pain with massage, stretches, and exercises. It may also involve other treatments, such as acupuncture, heat therapy, hydrotherapy, and ultrasound. 

Chiropractors take a more holistic approach to injuries and focus on overall health and wellbeing. Good health depends on a cohesive relationship between the spine, muscles, joints, organs, bones, and nervous system. Chiropractic treatment generally involves realigning the body through gentle force. This painless force should improve mobility and the overall functioning of the body. Chiropractors can be used to treat injuries and musculoskeletal problems such as pulls, strains, and sprains to muscles, joints, and disc pain. The primary benefit of chiropractic care is that the body can be treated for pain without drugs. Chiropractic treatment should be non-invasive and painless. Your injury or condition should be carefully examined, and the treatment should help restore your body’s natural balance and improve general health, wellbeing, and functionality.

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