Physical Therapy for Athletes: Balancing PT, Performance, and Prevention
Imagine sprinting towards the finish line, the crowd's cheers fueling your final push, when suddenly, a sharp pain shoots through your ankle, stopping you in your tracks. This isn’t just a runner's worst nightmare; it’s a common reality for many athletes who push their limits. Whether you’re chasing a personal best or just love the game, every athlete navigates the fine line between peak performance and potential injury. But what if you could tilt the odds in your favor?
The Reality of Sports Injuries
Whether you’re a seasoned athlete with a wall of medals or you’ve recently caught the pickleball bug, you know that being active is incredibly rewarding for your mental and physical health. On the other hand, you’ve probably also discovered injuries at some point in your training or competition performance. You are certainly not alone: 3.7 million people checked into emergency rooms around the country in 2023 for sports injuries. A separate study revealed the breakdown of the most common sports injuries:
Lower back muscle strains: 12.24%
Ankle sprains: 11.98%
Bone fractures: 9.31
The ankles, knees, and shoulders generally suffered the highest number of injuries, after those mentioned above, but no part of the body is immune from a sports injury. Neck and head injuries like concussions can also put athletes on the sidelines. Almost 6 out of 10 of these injuries occurred during practice or training, while the other 4 out of 10 happened during competition. The same study discovered additional insights about when, why, and how sports injuries happen:
The more hours spent practicing, the higher the likelihood of injury
Skipping warm-up exercises
Poor quality sports facilities
Being a young athlete (ages 14-17)
Not adequately preparing for performance
Improper training techniques
Skipping injury prevention activities
Performing without coach supervision
Poor quality sports equipment
Knowing why injuries happen can help you prevent at least some of them. If you're coming out of your off-season routine, or want to start a new sport, it’s a good idea to work with a sports physical therapy team early so you can address any areas of weakness, training imbalances, previous injuries, and steps you can take to prevent injuries in the first place.
In other words, it’s super important to focus on your “whole-athlete wellness” from head to toe to ramp up for a successful season.
Integrating Whole-Athlete Wellness
Wellness for athletes isn’t much different from wellness for everybody else: it encompasses choosing daily activities that benefit mental, physical, and emotional health. It empowers us to strive for daily improvement to achieve goals that give us a sense of well-being.
Our approach to physical therapy emphasizes this holistic wellness. For example, a competitive dance patient of ours, Lauren, realized through her recovery from a concussion and neck injury that wellness transcends physical health. “My breathing affects my whole, entire body,” says Lauren. In addition to working on exercises in physical therapy, she realized how important things like meditation, mindfulness, and breathing improved her post-injury recovery. Lauren now says that these wellness techniques have made her a better dancer than she was before her injury.
The Mental and Physical Health Connection in Physical Therapy for Athletes
As Lauren discovered, the connection between mental and physical stamina is intensely pronounced. Another recent study about sports injuries found that physical injury had a clear negative impact on athletes’ mental health. Negative mental health was further found to impact athletic performance, which could then increase the risk of additional injury, leading to worse mental health. It’s a vicious cycle.
Part of the challenge comes because athletes often have that classic internal drive to push through their pain, even though that’s entirely counterproductive to overall wellness, and, therefore, physical performance. This eventually gets in the way of pulling out of an injury slump and getting back to full activity. Our cross-country running and dancing patient Hayden learned this too. She pushed through some slight calf pain during training one day and the next morning she couldn’t walk without limping.
"Listen to your body, prioritize your health over external pressures from peers or coaches," she urged. She started coming to physical therapy to address the pain and found that working on head-to-toe wellness, core strength, and complete body balance was the key to getting back to full throttle.
“Dr. Paula provided me with real directions and a training plan,” explains Hayden. “I moved into the cross-country and dance season nervous but thankful. By the end of cross-country, I was doing even better than where I was before the injury.”
Making the Most of the Transition Between Off-Season to On-Season
Breathing, mindfulness, listening to your body... focusing on your overall wellness is the key to success, as science and our patients' stories illustrate! Nowhere does that need for wellness matter so much as during the shift between necessary rest periods of the off-season and periods of building and intensifying physical and mental exertion. We know this is a vulnerable time for athlete injuries.
However, relying on holistic physical therapy to map your way through that transition can help you avoid injuries. This helps you find the right balance of recovery and rest activities that prepare you to go into your next season seamlessly and successfully. During your off-season, you can prepare for a successful sports season with these tips:
Continue to engage in physical activities that keep you strong, balanced, and flexible. Swimming, cross-training, yoga, and Pilates are all great options.
Address earlier injuries and seemingly minor instances of pain with physical therapy right away to address any injuries and imbalances during your off-season so they don’t hamper your transition to the on-season.
Don’t forget to be kind to yourself and work on mental rest and recuperation. Spend time with friends, talk with a therapist, get sufficient sleep, and engage in hobbies that you love, but don’t get to spend as much time on during the sports season.
Practice mindfulness and breathing techniques that can help you enhance your overall wellness and awareness of things happening in your body so that you can address any issues proactively and with a sense of calm and intention.
The Role of Physical Therapy in Preparing for the Season
Holistic physical therapy should be an integral part of preparing for your active sports season, whether you’ve suffered an injury or not. Physical therapy can help athletes prepare by:
Improving your performance by focusing on balancing your body movements and patterns to reduce inefficiencies and imbalances that could slow you down
Preventing injuries by working out correct form during training exercises and as preparation for competition
Increasing strength and flexibility, which again can improve performance and prevent injuries
Every athlete is different, so it’s important to see a sports physical therapist in person so they can evaluate your movements, note imbalances, and work with you on accomplishing training goals specific to your sport and activity levels. Once we have created your unique body map and a physical therapy plan, you can even meet with us for virtual physical therapy sessions, especially if you’re on the road for competitions or special training activities.
Get the Physical Therapy Flemington NJ Athletes Trust
At A Life in Balance, we understand the unique challenges athletes face, from on-season and off-season transitions to injuries, recovery, and the need to set goals and achieve them! Whether you’re just starting your athletic journey or training for an elite athletic goal, we know you can do it, and we are here to support you as you strive to reach your personal best every day! Schedule an appointment for specialized, individual sports physical therapy Flemington NJ athletes rely on to break through barriers and achieve their athletic dreams!
