Whether you’re an athlete or you just like to be able to walk the dog and play with the kids, injuries aren’t welcome in your life. The freedom you get when you can move without pain is one that you want to safeguard, which is why you should consider adding strengthening and stretching to your daily regimen.
Patients often turn to Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román, a sports medicine specialist who treats all manner of musculoskeletal injuries, to come up with injury-prevention programs. And even though our name — No Mercy Sports Medicine — places the focus on sports injuries, we help athletes and nonathletes alike maintain healthy and strong bodies.
The four main components of your musculoskeletal system are bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. They're all connected in one way or another — tendons connect your bones to your muscles and ligaments connect bones to bones.
One of the best ways to avoid injuries is to place most of the workload on your muscles — it’s what they’re designed for — and take it off of your connective tissues.
For example, one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries — sprained ankles — affects 2 million people in the United States each year. A great way to protect and support the ligaments in your ankles is to strengthen the muscles that support your ankles.
When you do this, the next time that you twist your ankle, your muscles can prevent it from twisting to the point that it tears or overstretches your ligaments.
To put the exclamation point on the importance of strengthening, an analysis of studies involving more than 26,000 injuries found that strength training reduced sports injuries by about 70% and cut overuse injuries by half.
Another way in which strength or resistance training can help prevent injuries is that it protects your bones and promotes bone health.
As illustrated above, increasing your muscle strength can take the pressure off of your connective tissues. and it does the same for your bones. Your bones aren’t dormant hard tissues — they’re constantly remodeling and regrowing. When you work out, you’re signaling your body to rebuild bone.
The association between stretching and injury prevention is less clear cut than the link to strength training. Stretching can promote flexibility and range of motion, which can be helpful in preventing injury, as well as reducing post-exercise stiffness.
Stretching also increases your circulation and reduces stress, both of which are helpful when you’re active.
Where stretching can really help is if you’re incorporating balance exercises — great balance goes a long way toward avoiding injury. If injury prevention is your goal, try adding an element of balance to your daily stretches.
If you’re concerned about avoiding injury, it’s a good idea to come in and see Dr. Irizarry-Román for an injury risk assessment. Once he identifies any weak spots, he can create a tailor-made stretching and strengthening program to keep you on the move and injury-free.
To get that ball rolling, please contact No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida, by calling 305-614-6757.
