There is an increasing amount of evidence, suggestive that physical activity is important in both prevention and treatment of multiple common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, depression, etc. Injuries are almost the only disadvantage of exercise, but may be a common consequence of physical activity.

Managing sports injuries are time consuming, difficult and expensive, but sports injury prevention by means of strength training, proprioception exercises, stretching activities and a combination of these are easier and available to almost everyone.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 25 trials with 26 610 participants in total found that “physical activity was shown to effectively reduce sports injuries. Stretching proved no beneficial effect, whereas multiple exposure programmes, proprioception training, and strength training, in that order, showed a tendency towards increasing effect.”

“Strength training reduced sports injuries to less than one-third. Both acute and overuse injuries could be significantly reduced, overuse injuries by almost half. Apart from a few outlying studies, consistently favourable estimates were obtained for all injury prevention measures except for stretching.”

Consult your physiotherapist on what types of exercises will be most beneficial for your sporting activities.

Reference: Lauersen et al., 2014. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

Image: The Strength Continuum

Posted by: Ilse van Vuuren