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Is A Sports Injury Down To Bad Luck Or Bad Form?
If you suffer a non-contact sports injury when environmental conditions and previous injuries cannot be blamed, the cause is most likely poor co-ordination. You are probably prepared to accept this as just one of the hazards of sport. A sports injury is seen as just bad luck or a sort of initiation into sport, worse still, some may even regard it as a trophy or a sign of commitment.
Why do non-contact sports injuries happen? What condition allows a muscle to pull or a ligament to tear? Conventional advice on injury prevention in relation to movement includes: -
Avoiding poor technique
Maintaining good body alignment
Using correct breathing patterns
To follow this advice is harder than it first appears. Few of us are fully aware of what really constitutes good technique from a movement perspective because our learnt pattern is a habit. These patterns may become suspect due to poor conditioning, yet we remain unaware of the problem until an injury occurs. Up until this point we may have been satisfied with our technique if we have had no indication to the contrary. Following an injury new movement patterns are established to compensate for loss of function thus degrading the quality of movement further. Once this stage is reached avoiding poor technique is impossible without first improving how we move by eradicating the suspect patterns.
Trying to correct a technique will more likely increase effort as concentrating on the task translates into muscle tension. Imposing a style on top of a poorly aligned structure does not improve the structure.
To maintain good body alignment an athlete first needs to have poise to allow good body alignment! If we have poor movement patterns, and therefore questionable ?posture?, we will not know what good body alignment feels like and therefore be incapable of maintaining it.
If the quality of our movement is poor, attempts to achieve correct breathing are futile. If the structure is unbalanced, natural functioning cannot be resumed until the structure is balanced.
Conventional advice for sports injury prevention falls far short of addressing the real issue. Avoidance of injury requires a well-balanced, poised and flexible body capable of free movement in any direction with minimal effort. To achieve this state requires integration of the voluntary and reflex elements of movement, something we cannot achieve by trying harder.
Many struggle to regain form after a serious sports injury and lengthy rehab period, some take months or fail completely. Getting back into form will be slow if we do not know exactly what it is that needs to be recovered.
Natural talent for a sport comes from the right sort of conditioning. Good quality movement executed in the sporting activity sets up appropriate learnt movement patterns that reside at a subconscious level. These ?skill patterns? can be replaced by new poor quality actions following sports injury and possibly may never be regained.
If you suffer a non-contact sports injury when environmental conditions and previous injuries cannot be blamed, the cause is most likely poor co-ordination. You are probably prepared to accept this as just one of the hazards of sport. A sports injury is seen as just bad luck or a sort of initiation into sport, worse still, some may even regard it as a trophy or a sign of commitment.
Why do non-contact sports injuries happen? What condition allows a muscle to pull or a ligament to tear? Conventional advice on injury prevention in relation to movement includes: -
Avoiding poor technique
Maintaining good body alignment
Using correct breathing patterns
To follow this advice is harder than it first appears. Few of us are fully aware of what really constitutes good technique from a movement perspective because our learnt pattern is a habit. These patterns may become suspect due to poor conditioning, yet we remain unaware of the problem until an injury occurs. Up until this point we may have been satisfied with our technique if we have had no indication to the contrary. Following an injury new movement patterns are established to compensate for loss of function thus degrading the quality of movement further. Once this stage is reached avoiding poor technique is impossible without first improving how we move by eradicating the suspect patterns.
Trying to correct a technique will more likely increase effort as concentrating on the task translates into muscle tension. Imposing a style on top of a poorly aligned structure does not improve the structure.
To maintain good body alignment an athlete first needs to have poise to allow good body alignment! If we have poor movement patterns, and therefore questionable ?posture?, we will not know what good body alignment feels like and therefore be incapable of maintaining it.
If the quality of our movement is poor, attempts to achieve correct breathing are futile. If the structure is unbalanced, natural functioning cannot be resumed until the structure is balanced.
Conventional advice for sports injury prevention falls far short of addressing the real issue. Avoidance of injury requires a well-balanced, poised and flexible body capable of free movement in any direction with minimal effort. To achieve this state requires integration of the voluntary and reflex elements of movement, something we cannot achieve by trying harder.
Many struggle to regain form after a serious sports injury and lengthy rehab period, some take months or fail completely. Getting back into form will be slow if we do not know exactly what it is that needs to be recovered.
Natural talent for a sport comes from the right sort of conditioning. Good quality movement executed in the sporting activity sets up appropriate learnt movement patterns that reside at a subconscious level. These ?skill patterns? can be replaced by new poor quality actions following sports injury and possibly may never be regained.
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