by Steve Lilley

Created on: March 20, 2009   Last Updated: March 25, 2009

Old injuries can be very frustrating; they can affect people's lives in many ways. The first and most important piece of advice to given or to be taken is to seek help from a professional which as preferably studied injuries at degree level as a minimum standard. So looking for help from one of the following three would be a great help and a very good step in the right direction. A Physiotherapist, physical therapist, athletic trainer or a sports therapist. These are people who specifically train in the treatment, rehabilitation and prevention of injuries.

Injuries happen for various reasons like, tiredness, poor form/technique, poor nutrition, illness, lack of flexibility, over training, weather, other people and not being prepares. So it is good to gain an idea of what may have caused the injury in the first place as it will make it easier to identify what is wrong. With pain is it due to tightness, an impingement, decreased Range of Movement (ROM), impact or illness. From here any professional can help, the clearer you can be with what happened and what you have done to try and help the recovery will help speed up the recovery.

General treatment for most injuries is RICE, Rest which means reducing the strain place on the injured part of the body, but still using it to encourage movement. Ice helps to reduce swelling and bring out any bruising you may have. Compression is trying to reduce the swelling before it happens but also help to support the affected area. Elevation is about keeping the area high to try and prevent fluid from pooling in the affected are. Other methods that do help are gentle stretching, the best way to stretch is to stretch the opposite muscle group this lengthens the affected muscle without placing any stress on the affected muscle so allowing it to lengthen with no stress. If stress is applied via stretch to an injured muscle it can be made worse. Another method that can be used in heat, this allows tight areas of the body to soften. This occurs by encouraging blood flow to the area which in turn encourages the muscles to relax. With any heat or ice treatment the guidelines for max time are around about 10 minutes to prevent burns from occurring.

After this there is only one thing left to do and that is to strengthen the area, it is best to do this via functional activities in all the limb movements, i.e hip, flexing, extension, internal and external rotation, abduction and adduction. By making the activities functional (day to day activities) it will make living life easier.

Learn more about this author, Steve Lilley.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.