“The Sports Injury”
Sports Injury – South Melbourne Osteopath Clinic
Let’s take the pulled hamstring or calf as a pretty typical example of a sports injury and see what might help avoid this kind of problem.
It’s extremely common to experience a generalized tightness in the lower back, hips, or legs for quite some time before “pulling” a calf or hamstring. Often the connection is not made between, say, a stiff back and the injury….but they usually are related.
The connection is that all the nerves that supply muscles down the legs must come from the lower back. Thus, if there is tightness in the lower spine that stiffness squeezes the nerves going into the legs resulting in stiff, tight, leg muscles.
If a muscle is tightened up it is much more susceptible to being pulled, as it has less flexibility in the first place.
It can be the same for things like knee pain problems; if the back and hips are stiffened up and not moving smoothly then these results in uneven weight-bearing through the lower limbs. The upshot is the knees being thrown out of kilter as they can’t track evenly……repeat that uneven weight –bearing thousands of times over with running training and a knee issue often ensues.
So it’s worth taking the hint early on with such symptoms and nipping them in the bud…….ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure, as they say.
That prevention may involve spending some time each day on spinal and hip flexibility exercises, and having a little Osteopathic treatment to free up the stiffened up joints.
I’m also a fan of yoga for the same reasoning; the older we get the more time we have to invest in maintaining ease and flexibility of movement……rust never sleeps!!
cheers Dr Josh