What are the most frequent injuries in athletes?

If you are an athlete, these are the most frequent injuries that you can have. In this article Dr. Martínez Oller, specialist in Podiatry, talks about their causes and how they can be prevented according to what type of pathologies, as well as their treatments.

What are the most common podiatric injuries in athletes?

Every sport has a gesture that is repeated frequently, we call that the sporting gesture, well, these repetitions can often end up stressing any link in the biomechanical chain. Thus, we can find nail injuries such as hematomas in people who do trail running, deformations of the first metatarsal as hallux valgus in high intensity sports combined with pronator feet, plantar fasciitis in running, ligament ruptures in soccer players, sprains in sports where there is jumping, cam type impingement in racquet sports and a host of other pathologies.

Why are they generated?

Well, mostly due to stress of the system, as for example in deformities such as hallux limitus, plantar fasciitis or hip impingement. They can also be produced by not respecting the acute load versus chronic load at the beginning of a sporting activity or the return after an injury. Due to a lack of activation of certain essential muscle groups for certain sports activities.

We must understand that, on all these occasions, we are managing forces, and these forces are our weight combined with speed, which, in addition, depending on certain inefficient body positions, will complicate both the normal management of forces to avoid deformations or injuries, as well as sports performance.

What are the symptoms that make it necessary to see a specialist?

Of course, if our friend the pain appears, we should be interested in the reason for this warning, it may be something minor, but we must have this information, not because of the pain, but because of discomfort when doing our activity or after doing it, discomfort that may be muscular or joint to a greater extent. But that can give us an idea of which structures are having a responsibility that perhaps exceeds their capacity at that moment and that we must address as appropriate in each case.

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How can these injuries be prevented?

Well, with a good previous preparation, respecting the acute load/chronic load, with a balanced diet, with good rest, letting ourselves be advised by a professional, assessing which postural or muscular deficits could complicate my desired sporting activity. In short, with common sense.

What is the treatment like? Are they usually injuries that allow the person to continue exercising?

Talking about a treatment should always keep in mind what injury it should be treated for. There are hundreds of them, which indicates that none of them is the panacea, each one will have some indications that will also vary depending on the stage or severity of the injury, but fortunately today we can choose from a wide range of possibilities and adjust to the needs of each case.

You will be able to continue exercising as long as we compensate the deficit generated in the injury with different alternatives and here we could include from corticoid infiltrations to any bandage to give consistency to a damaged ligament, everything will depend on the sporting demands of each case, but in the vast majority, a reduction of the workload will facilitate the recovery of the system.