What can young athletes do to prevent injuries? With Gulf weather presenting additional challenges to being active, RU Active Sports Physiotherapy senior physiotherapist Johnathan Jagger spoke to GYS about the best ways to stay injury free.
“There’s a few things that, not just adolescents, but that anyone can do. Definitely make sure to do a good warm up and cool down. The warm up is basically to prepare the body and make sure you’re increasing your blood flow, make sure oxygen is getting to the muscles as well and just getting the body ready for that increased intensity and activity.
A warm up is always really good and a cool down as well to return the body back to its state before exercise. So again it helps to reduce any muscles soreness or any lactic acid.
Secondly when you’re training in Dubai is to make sure you’re hydrated. Hydration is a massive thing that at times can be overlooked but again if you’re dehydrated you tend to find that muscle performance is decreased and therefore you’re at a higher risk of injury.
The other thing is in Dubai because the seasons are so short you tend to find you do increased activity in a very short period and then have a long periods off. So firstly at pre-season training start doing some light training to get your body used to some activity before going all in every day which we see a lot with the children out here.
Make sure that you’re slowly and progressively building up to the activity that you want to do competitively. This will stop the overuse injuries so the ones that come about because you’re loading a particular muscle a lot over a short period of time.
Lastly make sure you don’t burn out. Kids are great because they have loads of energy and can just keep going but we’ve still got to be careful that there are chances for what’s classed as burnout. So make sure you’re looking for signs of fatigue and pain that’s not settling.
You might want to take a day off in the week or even have a recovery week off so it just gives your body time to heal and it’s not causing injuries from a longevity point of view.”