Check out the most common injuries in amateur athletes – 01/03/2024 – Sport

Summer holidays and New Year’s Eve are dates when many people start some physical activity to try to lose weight and have a healthier life. The excitement caused by the first days of practicing sports, however, in many cases is also accompanied by injuries.

Without the same preparation and infrastructure as professional athletes, weekend runners are more prone to a series of injuries, according to experts, either as a result of excess effort after a long period of inactivity or due to practice carried out in an inappropriate manner. inadequate.

Available treatments range from shock waves to stimulate healing to infiltrations for tissue regeneration, including methods that are still experimental in the country.

According to Sérgio Maurício, orthopedic knee specialist and full member of the Brazilian Society of Exercise and Sports Medicine, the most common injuries related to running are those that involve the cushioning of the body’s impact against the ground.

“When we land against the ground, we will hit our foot, it will stretch our calf muscles, it will stretch our Achilles tendon”, points out the orthopedist.

He adds that an amateur athlete who participates in a street running event lasting around an hour takes an average of 10,000 steps along the route. “In other words, there will be five thousand cycles of shortening and lengthening of these structures, on each side. That’s why injuries occur due to repetitive movements.”

Injuries to muscles, bones and tendons are most common, says the expert. These are cases such as medial tibial stress syndrome, popularly known as shin splints, and plantar fasciitis, inflammation of a membrane on the sole of the foot caused by excessive effort.

Luciano da Rocha Loures Pacheco, orthopedic specialist in knees and hips, states that the treatment of injuries can be divided between conservative and surgical methods.

In conservative mode, the recommendation is to use ice packs, rest the affected limb and analgesic and anti-inflammatory medication. Once the most acute phase of the injury has passed, a rehabilitation process must begin with a physiotherapist, who will provide appropriate guidance for recovering joint movements and strengthening the affected muscles.

Sérgio Maurício states that, when starting the injury treatment process, it is common in sports medicine to try to keep the athlete doing some activity that does not worsen the problem, in order to preserve physical conditioning.

“If the patient has a leg injury and feels pain when running, but not when cycling or running on soft sand, we reduce the person’s training volume and vary the stimulus”, says the orthopedist.

Among the recovery treatments for amateur athletes, Maurício mentions shock wave therapy, which aims to stimulate healing, widely used in stress fractures and tendon injuries; and prolotherapy, a method that uses hyaluronic acid infiltrations to regenerate injured tissues.

The specialist states that there are still a series of promising studies underway, which use, for example, the use of stem cells and platelet-rich plasma from the patient himself.

Some of these innovative methods, however, do not yet have the necessary approvals from the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine) and have restricted use in the country. “These treatments are widely used in the United States and Europe”, says Maurício, who is also a marathon runner and is part of the team of specialists at the Rio Marathon.

Pacheco adds that, regardless of the sport practiced, everyone needs a minimum of preparation before starting to practice.

According to him, the ideal is to spend at least five to ten minutes before starting the sporting activity warming up the muscles — if it is a sport that uses the upper limbs more, warming up the shoulders, arms, wrists and waist. If the activity in question demands more from the lower limbs, it is recommended to warm up the muscles of the thighs, calves and ankles and the muscles of the lumbar spine.

Pacheco also says that muscle stretching should not be done before the sporting activity, but rather after it is finished. This is because activity with muscles that are already warm reduces the risk of a contracture or even a more serious injury.

“The important thing is for amateur athletes to respect their body’s limits, seek information from sports doctors, physical educators, physiotherapists, nutritionists, maintain a healthy diet, avoid excess weight and always warm up before and stretch muscles after physical activity” , says the expert.