Games of Knowledge | Sports and Exercise

Games Guy | February 1, 2010

Sports physical therapy. What is this concept? It is actually all about sports medicine and physical therapy combined to ensure the good functioning  of sportspeople, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of the possible injuries and conditions in sportspeople. To understand sports physical therapy you first must know and understand what sports medicine and sports medicine specialists focus on.

Sports medicine deals with preventing, diagnosing and treating the injuries caused by participation in sports activities. The accidents occurring in such activities harm joints, muscles and bones. This is why sports medicine is so much interrelated with physical therapy. Actually the sports medicine team is formed of physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, coaches, and very important physical therapists, beside the sportsmen themselves. Sports physical therapy contributes greatly to the innovations in the field and this is because of the rapidity in the nature of sports.

There is a pressure, due to the competition, which influences the style of work in sports physical therapy. The fast recovery of patients is essential in sports physical therapy. Sports medicine is quite difficult to define and categorize because it comprises more than one specialty. So far there has been a misunderstanding in perceiving sports medicine. People considered it only dealt with the physical injuries; as a matter of fact, it is a wider area that also involves fields and factors of psychological, environmental and physiological nature along with those related to the musculoskeletal system and ortopedic treatment.

Sports physical therapy involves a lot of other medical specialties and specialized workers such as: cardiology, pulmonology, dermatology, traumatology, ophtalmology, orthopedic surgery, podiatry, dentistry,biomechanics, rehabilitation medicine, etc. Sports physical therapy in the USA employs sports medicine specialists, either orthopedists or primary-care medicine specialists, who are usually the leaders of the medical team. The other components of the sports physical therapy team are physicians, surgeon specialists, physiologists, trainers, physical therapists, coaches and other personnel.

If you are a doctor interested to specialize in the field of sports physical therapy you will have to start with a basic residency program in family practice, emergency medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, or physical medicine and rehabilitation. The next step will be to obtain another 1 or 2 years of additional training in accredited fellowship subspecialty programs in sports medicine. There are additional forums you can attend to get expertise as a sports medicine specialist. Sports medicine, and implicitly, sports physical therapy, has been accepted as a subspecialty of the American Board of Medical Specialties only recently (the late 80s).

Category: Education, Health and Well-Being, Hobbies and Activities, skilled games, Society Issues, sports games | 1 Comment »
Tags: Athletic Trainers, Biomechanics, Medicine Team, Muscles And Bones, Musculoskeletal System, Orthopedic Surgery, Orthopedists, Ortopedic, Physical Injuries, Physical Therapists, physical therapy, Physicians And Surgeons, Physiological Nature, Prevention Treatment, Primary Care Medicine, Rapidity, Rehabilitation Medicine, Sports Activities, Sports Medicine, Sports Medicine Specialists, Sports physical therapy

Games Guy | February 1, 2010

Sports Knee Braces

Using sports knee braces is not a novel idea. However, it is only recently that sports knee braces have become some sort of a controversial topic.

On one end of the spectrum are people sporting the many benefits of wearing sports knee braces as a means of preventing sports-related injury, while on the other end are those who say that sports knee braces hardly make any difference and may even have the potential of increasing the risk injuries.

Athletes are likewise neutral in their acceptance of sports knee braces. Mainly, they are worried that sports knee braces might hamper their performance. This is especially true for “skill” players, or those who play forward, running backs, and any other positions where speed and agility are the focus.

Those players who play defense are more likely to wear sports knee braces as their function depend less on agility and speed but on strength.

However, the question remains: do sports knee braces work?

When practitioners of sports medicine are still debating over this issue, it would be difficult to tell. One thing is certain: the choice of whether or not to wear sports knee braces rests entirely on the wearer.

Types of Braces

Knee braces for sports are divided into two broad categories. These are:

Functional Knee Braces

The objective of this type of knee braces is to help support knees that are weakened due to injury. It is designed to function as a substitute for ligaments that have been damaged as a result of the injury.

The human knees are composed of two essential compartments. In some knee injuries, only one compartment is damaged, leaving the remaining uninjured knee compartment to its own devices, supporting the entire body weight. In order to lessen the stress on this uninjured part as well as prevent the injured area from further collapsing, functional knee braces are worn.

Sports knee braces of this type are meant to reduce movement in the affected area and provide necessary support. In doing this, the braces helps speed up recovery and prevents further injuring the damaged area.

Prophylactic Knee Braces

The main objective of prophylactic knee braces is to prevent knee injuries. In high-risk sports, which includes most contact sports such as football, these sports knee brace types are recommended to be worn by athletes. The brace is supposed to reduce the risk of sustaining injury to the knees, which are the body’s largest and most exposed joint.

The first of this type of sports knee braces was popularized some time in the 1970s when they were tested on NFL players. Ever since, several studies have been conducted, investigating the injury rate of players who wear braces versus those who do not wear any braces.

Category: Education, foreign games, games of sport, skilled games, Society Issues, sports games | No Comments »
Tags: Agility, Controversial Topic, Functional Knee Braces, Knee Injuries, Knees, Ligaments, medicine, Necessary Support, Novel Idea, Objective, Risk Injuries, Running Backs, Skill Players, Spectrum, Sports Injury, Sports Knee Braces, Sports Medicine, Stress, Types Of Braces