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Injuries
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Prevent injuries
How to prevent ACL-injuries?How do I relieve my back?
How is it possible that my ankle causes shoulder pain?
...
Step into the world of prevention and prevent injuries by creating insights into the biomechanics and function of your body. Understand how muscles really work and discover the latest approaches regarding prevention of physical discomforts and injuries.
Solution for overuse injuries in sports?
Stability training for soccer players...a different point of view.
Are you someone who cares about prevention?
Or have you already suffered from physical discomfort and you don't want to go through it again?
Is it worth much to you to be and remain 100% fit and do you realize that an injury might cause a lot of drawbacks?
Congratulations!
The fact that you are reading this page means that you care about prevention and that you're willing to work on it.
What can we learn from the Cybex test for (professional) soccer players? Or not learn?
Functional stretching for youth soccer players
Protect yourself against injuries with functional stretching
Abdominal Injuries
There are quite a lot of athletes which develop injuries near the abdominal muscles. The abs are, like all muscles, linked to other parts of our body and are influenced by our ankles as well as by the movements of our arms. Abdominal injuries often appear when one body part is not functioning or moving optimally. Having all segments move as it should is the main task in order to become injury free. For that reason it is important to train the abdominal muscles in the way they work and function.Functional abdominal training for soccer goalkeepers
Do you know how abdominal muscles work?
What is their role?
What movements can we expect of them?
Many people still train their abs in a lying position while we know by now that one can train them better in a functional way.
Do you know how to train your abs in stance?
If we should all better understand our abdominal muscles and train them in a more natural way, less abdominal injuries (and other injuries) would occur and our body would be grateful.
Do you think you're training well when you feel your muscles burn and vibrate?
Could it be that the abdominal muscles tell us: 'Stop what you're doing, I'm not made for this!!!'
On each page of our website, you can subscribe to a FREE abdominal program, our gift to you!
The program lasts 12 weeks and every week you get a short email with questions, information, examples and more. We start slowly and in the classical way and about half way we go to a more functional way of abdominal training.
All our functional programs are educational and it's our intention to involve you in a learning process so you never forget the information and content.
For clarity, abdominal muscles are not more important than others to lose weight. Your body will decide where it will use its fats the first. So if you think to efficiently lose weight in your abdomen by performing a lot of abdominal exercises, please note that there are better ways to lose weight.
Feel free to come back to us with questions or feedback.
Do you want to learn more about injury prevention?
DVD: Injury prevention and strength training through mobility and flexibility
Back to basics: the most up-to-date information and examples for an 'healthier back'
Do you have a specific problem or question, don't hesitate to contact us.
Are you part of a sports club and you wish to setup an on site demo-training regarding injury prevention at your favourite club?
What are the most common injuries in sports? During work? Performing your hobby?
Did you ever had sports injuries and how did your sports injury rehabilitation look like?
Sport injury:
Running injuries
Where do running injuries appear? And how can we prevent them?We can divide the injuries in muscle injuries like a hamstring injury, a calf strain, groin pain,... and in joint discomfort like knee injuries or an ankle injury.
Prevent muscle injuries: You can prevent a lot of discomfort, pain or chronic problems by performing a dynamic and 3D warming-up, where we prepare the body on a logic manner for its task: running, playing soccer, basketball ... all the activities where we have to run. Consider that a good stretching and mobility program is different depending on your sport or activity so... it is not the same for a runner as for a windsurfer.
You can find more 'functional stretch-info' at our 'functional programs', we have created a functional stretch program for runners.
Prevention, training and rehab looks alike when you know how the body works, so our prevention programs and our sports injury rehabilitation are built with the same principles, idea's and insights.
Act2prevent: hamstring injury
We see a lot of hamstring injuries appear in different sports and activities. Most of the time we stretch them in 1 plane (sagital) by reaching forward (or raising the leg) and hold that position. You can make it more dynamic and stretch them in 3 planes of motion, because they work in those 3 planes when running, playing soccer, ...Tip: A hamstring injury occurs a lot in the transverse plane, so make it stronger by working the hamstring muscle in that transverse plane. Make it also eccentrically powerful by performing functional movements.
Database of 70 functional exercises
Soccer DVD: Injury prevention and strength training by mobility and flexibility
Act2prevent: groin pain
Groin pain, what is it, where does it come from and how can we get rid of it?The groin: adductors, abdominals,... and?
Groin pain can have different causes and it can be important to differentiate acute from chronic pain in the groin. Acute pain in the groin can appear by bad warming-up or preparation before your sports or activities. Like with the other muscles you can prevent a painful and acute groin by performing a 3D and dynamic stretch of the adductors and the abdominal muscles. At our item soccer DVD -FAQ we have put some idea's about 3D adductor stretch and at the bottom of every page we have our educational and free 12-week abdominal program. Subscribe and we will teach you how you can train your abdominals in an functional way.
If your discomfort becomes more chronic or appears every few weeks or months, it is important to search for the cause to become pain free. A medical professional needs to assess your body and the way it moves, sometimes we need a foot-orthotic to help. Please remember that every muscle works in 3 planes of motion, so don't train the adductor by only adducting the leg. We don't advice the adductor machines in the gym to recover from groin injuries. If you want more information about the disadvantages of strength machines, we have this article here for you.
10 good reasons why (professional) soccer players better don't work out using strength machines
Act2prevent: ankle injury
What kind of ankle injuries do you know?We see al lot of sprains, ligament tears and sometimes cartilage damage.
You can prevent a lot of ankle injuries by performing a functional warming-up before your sports activity. It is important to waken-up the nervous system in your preparation, and for example mobility in the hip in the frontal plane can help your ankle. Why?
Just stand-up and move your hip to the side, as far as possible, like you want to touch a wall next to you. When you reach further with the hip you will notice that your will get at the outside of the foot and ankle, a bit like with an ankle sprain or ankle tear.
So when you are able to go further in the 'frontal' hip, the later you will get at the outside of the foot and ankle. If your hip is very tight and not able to go to the side, the faster you get at the outside of the ankle. We see this 'hip-cause' a lot with people who regularly have an ankle injury. It is just an example to show you it is not always the ankle injury to look at... because sometimes the cause can be somewhere else. This is why a total body mobility program can prevent a lot of health problems.
Ankle sprain rehabilitation will be focussed on the above insights, working flexibility of the hip, training the nervous system and proprioceptors, mobility at the ankle joint,... Mobility has its place in ankle sprain rehabilitation, and we see a lot of people who had an ankle injury before and, even when they recovered before, they will still notice a difference in mobility left-right ankle. We see those differences appear or become clear when we perform one stance leg exercises. It is important in our ankle sprain rehabilitation to work at those differences in mobility to have the best results and prevent relapse.
Act2prevent: knee injuries
Knee injuries are a very common sport injury, and besides the muscle problems one of the most common soccer injuries. But also in other impact sports like running, basketball, volleyball we see a lot of knee injuries appear. In contact sports we have a lot of acl injuries and there is not a lot we can do about them, but we can do a lot to prevent non-contact acl injuries. Acl injuries, one of the most common knee injuries, is even growing in appearance and there is a lot we can do to prevent them. The glutes are a very important part of our body to help the knee and to prevent a knee injury. Because we mostly have to sit the whole day, our glutes become less active and less reactive to protect our knee. When we want to perform some kind of activity afterwards, it can be important to prepare our body as it should, wakening up the muscles and the nervous system to protect our joints. Performing functional movements and functional stretching will have good results and help us to stay healthy and in a good shape.Patella problems is one of the other common knee injuries, which has mostly its cause in the ankle or the hip. You will need professional help or a physical therapy rehabilitation center to help you solve this kind of problem. If you notice that your knee injury is getting chronic, this means that there is a cause still to find. Surgery is not always the best solution for patella-femoral problems like inflammations, most of the time it doesn't remove the cause, only the symptoms. There are some very good physical rehabilitation centers where you can find very talented people to help you.
Our advice: Look for physiotherapists and medical help who are familiar with 'Applied Functional Science', they are trained in human biomechanics and are treating the cause instead the symptom. You will recover a lot quicker and have less possibility for relapse.
Are Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries epidemic in soccer?
Act2prevent: shoulder injuries
Shoulder injuries and for sure the 'rotator cuff injury' appears in sports or activities where we mostly have to do overhead performance, like tennis, volleyball, basketball,...Most of the time the rotator cuff injury is the symptom, but the cause is somewhere else like at the hip of the thoracic spine. Is it possible that a volleyball-player is overusing his of her shoulder because he or she can not open the hip enough?
A medical professional will need to assess your body and its movements to find the cause and treat it. There are physical rehabilitation centers who are specialised in 'searching the cause' instead of working the symptoms. Surgery can help the symptoms but are rarely working the cause, sometimes combining causal and symptomatic therapy is the only solution for rotator cuff injury. The rotator cuff rehabilitation will be focussing on the cause and work the mobility and flexibility from the very beginning. So even after the surgery it is important to find the cause and work it.
We discussed the hip as a probable suspect for rotator cuff injury but the thoracic spine and lack of mobility at the shoulder blades can cause compression and irritation at the shoulder tendons. Like with most overuse injuries we can prevent shoulder injuries by working a functional stretch and training program where we keep in mind the principles of human motion and biomechanics.
The functional stretch program for volleyball players and volleyball coaches
If you ever get a shoulder inpignement and nobody can help you unless a surgeon (sometimes this is the only solution), please search in you neighbourhood for physical rehabilitation centers where they have FAFS's (Fellow Applied Functional Science) working. There is a great chance they can help you. Like we discussed before there are a lot of important things to assess in rotator cuff rehabilitation.
Act2prevent: Back injuries
Too much people suffer back injuries: lower left back pain, back pain right side, pain in the left side, upper back muscle pain, si joint pain, mid back pain,...Offcourse it is logic that we are looking for a lower back pain remedy or lower back pain exercises to relieve the complaints.
We see a lot of people having chronic back pain which are looking for pain and stress reduction in the back. One of the cheapest therapy is 'movement', like walking.
Because back pain can have a lot of causes it can be important to find yourself professional help, for sure if you don't feel pain and stress reduction after your 'movement program'. Please take in consideration that a stiff ankle can cause back problems, so it is possible that your medical professional at your physical therapy rehabilitation center is going to screen your whole body to find the cause and offer you a personal lower back pain remedy.
You can find a lot of lower back exercises if you go on the internet. If you are not only searching for lower back exercises but also wants to get better insights and knowledge about the causes of lower back pain, please consider our 'Back-pain program: Back to basics', you have it at your place in just a few minutes. We offer this together with a database of 70 functional exercises if you are the person who wants to exercise by yourself.
Act2Prevent: soccer injuries
We have discussed some injuries above like running injuries, shoulder injuries, knee injuries, back injuries and gave some information about groin pain, the ankle injury and the hamstring injury.We would like to dedicate some extra time on the soccer injuries, because we still see too much non-contact injuries in soccer which we can prevent.
The most common soccer injuries are the muscle strains and tears, a lot of acl injuries and luckily fewer ankle injuries, hip or low back pain.
Soccer players sometimes get inflammation at abdominals, knee/patella-tendon, Achilles-tendon caused by overuse.
Dear Willem,
Just a quick note to let you know I got through the entire injury prevention and strength training by mobility and flexibility video. Flat out awesome job.
We really appreciate your thoughtfulness and kindness with respect to your remarks at the beginning of the video. I believe you did just a really good job making it very clear and easy to follow along.
Even without the subtitles, I truly believe I would know what you're saying because you said it so well.
Gary Gray, PT, www.grayinstitute.com
Stability training for soccer players...a different point of view.
What can we do about the muscle strains and tears?
What can we do to prevent acl injuries?
What can we do to prevent overuse and inflammation?
We are convinced that we can prevent a lot of discomfort by spending more time at flexibility and mobility. A good 3D and functional warming-up can prevent a lot of muscle problems and will even have better performance.
Training 'functional' during the week, working the flexibility will make the body stronger, more reactive and will build the physical capacity of your body. Better reactive capacity of your muscles and proprioceptors gives less chance for muscles problems and acl injuries.
Functional stretching for youth soccer players
A good mobility of every segment of your body will give less 'overuse' reactions. Most of the time a segment gets overused because another one doesn't do its job. So overuse doesn't always has to do with training too much, but sometimes with a part of the body that doesn't react as it should.
Act2Prevent has created a soccer DVD: injury prevention and strength training by mobility and flexibility, where we show how a soccer player can prepare him/herself on a dynamic and logic way to play soccer. It is an educational video so that you know why we are doing it like this. Once you understand the principles, you will be able to build very good training programs and bring a lot of fun and variations... and less injuries.
If you like a document more, we have built a special program for soccer players and coaches.
The functional stretching program for soccer players and coaches gives you all the important insights to know when you want to play soccer on a safe and well prepared manner. It will explain why we choose 3D dynamic stretching and how it can assist our body. It is, like our video and all our programs... educational, where we share our knowledge with the reader. You will be able to build further on this unique information.
If you are a soccer player or coach, we have an article here for you to read. Please come back to us for your feedback about it. 10 good reasons why (professional) soccer players better don't work out using strength machines
