Making Sense of New Injuries at the Start of Your Sport Season

School is back, sports are full swing, and it’s competition season!

This means people are moving, grooving, and (hopefully) getting more sleep! (Right!?)

With increased activities - whether running, throwing, lifting, or whatever sport/activity you take part in, we see increased repetitions of movement.

With more repetitions of movement, we would assume we become more proficient and masterful in the skill. This is accurate, however, if we have incomplete mechanics (or non-optimal movement patterns), we see the body begin to break down.

This breakdown could be on the first rep, or the thousandth. I see it all the time - “Dr. Caitlin, I hurt my back picking up a pillow off the ground…why?” Because it wasn’t the pillow that did it. That repetition of movement was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the hundreds or thousands of reps that accumulated before it.

When the volume of your activities pick up and you experience the beginnings of abnormal ‘discomfort’ (not just exercise-based / cardio) or ‘pain’, you should really get it checked out.

This is your body’s red light/siren/alarm system sounding off.

These are called lagging indicators.

Barring traumatic injuries or accidents, if pain is present we expect that something has been happening in the body prior to the onset of the pain.

This is what we look for in your initial exam. What are the root causes? How did they play a role in the presentation of your symptoms? And most importantly - what are we going to do to address it?

This weekend we set up a tent at a sand volleyball tournament. I worked with a number of people who had lower back tightness and/or pain. Most of these individuals reported that this wasn’t the first instance of their back pain! In fact, they said it was something that happens when they start to play volleyball regularly again or pick up their activity level in general.

If that’s something you’ve been dealing with, here’s an exercise that might help reduce the symptoms: Serratus Rockbacks

And remember, we’re always here to help.

Our contact information is listed at this link, if you ever need a free consultation.