Whether you are a highly-trained athlete or a weekend warrior, there’s always a chance you could get injured.
Unfortunately, when injuries happen, it can be hard to know what you’ve tweaked or how to treat it.
The least common to the most common sports injuries are from unintentional accidents, inadequate warm-up exercises or sports activities.
Areas that are usually affected are joints, tendons, and ligaments.
Common injuries include:
- Sprains: Sprains occur when a ligament tears. Typically caused by trauma knocking a joint out of position and damaging supporting ligaments. Areas most affected include ankles, knees, and wrists.
Strains: Strains are caused by a twist, pull, or tearing of a muscle or tendon from overstretching or over-contraction of a muscle. - Concussion: It is mild, traumatic brain injury, common in many sports such as rugby and cricket. Identifying a concussion and providing appropriate treatment as soon as possible is vital, especially for younger athletes. One of the main areas for concern with a concussion is that players often return to play too soon.
- Dislocation: Dislocations arise when two bones which are joined at a joint are dislocated from each other. Those most are a risk for this type of injury include people who participate in contact sports such as wrestling, rugby, and martial arts. The joints most commonly affected include the ankles, knees, shoulders, hips, elbows and jaw.
- Fractures: Fractures can either be caused a result of hard, sudden impact (acute) or as a result of repetitive stress to that bone over time (stress fracture).
- Joint injuries: They often occur from hard twisting or sharp bending movements, hard landings, improper warm-ups, and forceful extension. Often damage is caused to the cartilage or ligaments in and around the knee.
- Tendon injuries: Tendons can be torn or completely rupture which can be extremely painful. If the tendon is completely ruptured it will need to be repaired surgically whereas a partial tea, called tendinitis, is usually a cause of aging or overuse.
- Tendinitis: This refers to acute tendon injuries that occur with inflammation.
- Tendinosis: This is a chronic condition that occurs over time from small tendon injuries, which don’t heal properly. Inflammation is not characteristic, although can occur at the initial injury.
- Tendinopathy: Tendinopathy is a general term for tendon damage caused by overuse, microtears, and collagen degeneration, evidenced by inflammation, pain, and weakness. The joint areas most commonly affected by tendinopathy are the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle.