Injury Prevention Training: Who needs it? 

Injury Prevention Training: Who needs it?

The last 10 years of my life has been devoted to training high performing individuals, predominantly competitive athletes, helping them move more efficiently, compete with greater intensity, and build top level speed, strength, and durability. I am passionate about this area and enjoy helping friends and clients achieve their goals.

The fields of sports training and rehabilitation sciences have advanced in recent decades, and as such, athletes are bigger, stronger, faster, and more explosive. Movements are more precise, directional changes more rapid, and contact points more forceful. Bigger and faster bodies produce more intense collisions, and the risk of injury increases as a result of heightened stress to the musculoskeletal system. This is particularly true for athletes from contact sports (football, downhill skiing, basketball, volleyball, combat sports, etc). Similarly, ACL injury rates are higher for high school and collegiate women’s basketball, volleyball and soccer than their male counterparts. So, in my opinion, prehabilitation techniques, (injury prevention training), should be integrated into all programs to help build durable athletes.

Prehabilitation focuses on four areas as they pertain to the athlete’s physiological and biomechanical requirements :

1. Assessing the healthy player’s movement patterns prior to the start of the season (Grey Cook is a pioneer in this field).
2. Identifying the flawed movements and couple this with the individual’s injury history
3. Understanding the inherent risks of the sport and the individual position
4. Predicting potential injuries and then addressing them through remedial exercises, stretches, foam rolling, and manual work, in addition to the strength and conditioning program

Once “predictable” injuries are identified, a pre-habilitation program is designed, combining traditional remedial movements with strength, conditioning, stretching, yoga, and pilates. This specialized program is then integrated into the athlete’s established sports training routine, paying close attention to the connective tissues, joints, and muscles that would normally have a high incidence of injury. The end product is a year round program that accomplishes the interrelated goals of enhanced performance and injury prevention. These techniques are sports specific, and indeed athlete specific, as they highlight the predominant muscle movement patterns present in the sport. The goals of prehabilitation are as follows:

1. Achieve correct muscle balance among antagonistic muscle groups;
2. Create synergy among motor unit recruitment patterns;
3. Boost the efficiency of the movement patterns inherent in the sport;
4. Enhance joint mobility and stability;
5. Improve flexibility;
6. Promote integration of movements through the hips and torso; and
7. Increase proprioception

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About The Author

Eric Minkwitz

Since 2002, Eric Minkwitz has operated Mink Training Systems, a sports performance, workplace wellness, and nutritional consulting business geared towards student-athletes, active individuals, and busy professionals. Minkwitz works with people of all levels, to educate and empower his clients to reach their potential in team sports, personal endeavors, and physical competitions of all types.