Sports Injury Prevention, a Self Help Guide By Fitness Expert Spencer Jackson
Sports Injuries can be classified in two categories
1: Traumatic Injuries:
Traumatic injuries are ones that happen suddenly in which you know something has gone wrong and you can feel the effects of the injury immediately, perhaps swelling, pain, an open wound or bruising. A traumatic injury can be extrinsic or due to an external cause like a sudden turn as you change direction, a direct blow or a fall. Also it can be intrinsic, without an obvious cause, like a footballers achilles tendon rupture or a 100 metre sprinters hamstring strain in a race.
Traumatic injuries are relatively easy for a specialist to diagnose. Difficulties only arise if the injury is particularly severe, or if complications occur which aren't apparent at first sight, immediately atfer the injury has happened.
Avoiding this type of injury is to minimize the risk factors. Make sure that the enviroment around you is safge, so if a pitch is waterlogged or the floor is wet the game should be cancelled. Make sure equipment is checked, ids there a crack in the shaft of your tennis racket ? Are the posts of the boxing ring properly padded ? Make sure all safety gear like mouthguards, helmets, groin guards, shin pads and padded vests are always worn when appropriate. The rules of the sport must be clearly understood by all participants and applied by the referees, match officials or umpires. This is especially important in contact sports like america football and rugby, sports where collisions can occur like squash and combat sports like MMA and boxing, where the rules are designed to protect participants from harm.
2: Overuse Injuries:
Overuse injuries are a little more subtle because they come on over time gradually as an increasing pain, these are directly associated with more repetitive sports. Runners sore knee (shin splints) and tennis elbow are good examples of overuse injuries in sport.
Overuse injuries need a little more assessment because inflammatory conditions and many diseases can mimic this kind of pain pattern.
Avoiding overuse injuries involves allowing your body to adapt to repetitive stress. If you make any sudden change in your traning routine, perhaps by increasing your cycling mileage from 40 miles to 100 miles per week or by suddenly doing 4 hours of tennis serving after a winter's break from the game, or even by somemore subtle change like doing your sport every day instead of every other day, some part of your body will show the signs of over use. An increase in training has to be gradually introduced, building up in easy stages, allowing recovery days from intense training, and rest days when pain and fatigue set in. If you have to rest for injury or illness, make sure that firstly you have made a full recovery before resuming your sport and secondly, that you start again very gradually, doing a little at a time. For every exercise session, you should always warm up and warm down thoroughly and shower or bath as soon as you finidhh to avoid stiffness. Your warm up should consist of 4 parts and should last about 10 - 15 minutes. You should do dynamic stretching for your muscles, ballistic bouncing movements for your joints. Pulse warmers consisting of 6 to 10 sets of half minute intervals of hard exercise, like sprints or squat thrusts, and finally, skill rehearsals, in which you practice specific movements relating to your sport (Specificty Principal). Technically you must try and develop the most efficient style you can which is appropriate to your sport. Any equipment you use must be the correct weight and size for you, a child for instance should not use a full size cricket bat until they have grown strong enough to use it easily. Your sports shoes must fit correctly without cramping or rubbing your feet and you should replace the insoles or the shoes themselves if they wear down.
Sports Injury Rehabilitation Principles
There is never any point in trying to run off or exercise through the pain of an injury. When you have pain relating to a particular activity or movement, continuing this movement will only cause more harm to the damaged tissues. After you have applied any first aid measures, your next priority is to obtain an accurate diagnosis of the damage which has been done. Once this has been correctly diagnosed you have to begin your rehabilitation ith specific exercises to help the injured area, under the guidance of your practitioner and within the limits of pain.
Generally the pattern of recovery for muscle and tendon injuries is passive stretching to regain losses in flexibility, followed by specific restrengthening exercises concentrating on the injured muscle group, building up to a final stage of functional exercises, in which the injured muscle group works in co-ordination with its surrounding muscles and normal patterns of movement are established. Stretching the injured muscles remains an important routine for some time after you have recovered from an injury, which will prevent the danger of the muscles becoming tight and then being injured again. You need to continue to stretch the muscles on a daily basis and as your first part of your warm up before exercising.
For injuries to your joints, the pattern of rehabilitation usually consists of strengthening exercises for the muscles sorrounding the joint to regain stability, followed by exercises to regain joint mobility, the last stages of joint rehab is the functional and dynamic exercises. Again you must continue to do specific exercises to protect an injured joint, even after you have recovered. 
Stretching muscle groups involves positioning the muscles in their longest possible range, within your pain limits and holding the stretch for a count of ten, without moving at all. In this way , the muscle pay out and you can gradually increase the amount they stretch, each time you repeat the exercise. To increase joint mobility , you have to stretch the muscle groups that surround it with passive stretching, and you should also do some bouncing, ballistic movements to mobilise the joint structures. Strengthening exercises will only improve power if you increase the workload of a muscle. You can either increase the number of times you do an exercise, or increase the weight that you use, or increase the speed in which you do it. For home use you can buy some ankle or wrist weights, adjustable dumbell weights, resistance tubes, handgrips as these are ideal for muscle rehabilitation and they come in different weights for when your muscles become stronger.
Remember progression is the key, start with little and often and gradually increase the amount that you do. For stretching a muscle group do two or three exercises at a time, around every hour if you can and then gradually increrase the amount of exercises you do. Remember to work within your pain limits so that you do not increase the risk of further damage. Alternative exercise is an important part of rehabilitation any rehab program. You need to maintain your fitness levels to some degree, any form of exercise which does not cause pain over you injury is a good substitute for your sport. Generally swimming and cycling is good for general exercise. In the swimming pool you can do specific exercises for your injury, or you can devise training sessions improving your endurance by doing steady timed swims and improving your general fitness with interval sprints in the water, interspersed with short rest periods. Progression remains the important principle, so you should aim to increase the work that you do, either by doing more intervals or by increasing your steady state swimming times. This also applies to your cycling times or distances.
Remember do not resume your sport until you are sure that you can stress the injured tissues without any pain,limitation of movement or swelling. When you do start, remember start with little and gradually build up tp full participation. Do not stress your body on a daily babsis and asses whether a particular activity has caused an adverse reaction. For some time after recovery, you should maintain a daily routine of specific exercises to guard against any recurrence of the rehabilitated area.
Minimise Swelling With Elevation
Tissues that are torn release fluid which are clear or coloured in nature, depending to the type of injury and the tissue damaged. If there enough fluid released you will see swelling where the fluid is trapped beteween the underlying tissues and skin. This fluid may be blood, but this does not always make your skin look red over the swelling. If this fluid traps between the layers of your skin, you may see yellowish or red bruising, this indicates a certain amount of internal bleeding.
Gravity promotes fluid to flow downwards or vertically, but opposes the flow in the opposite direction. In the normal way, your muscles act to press on your blood vessels and force their fluid upwards against gravity. After injuries have ocurred, any excess fluid accumulates, unless to take measures to promote its re-absorption into the normal flow sysrems.
One way of doing this is to position the injured limb so that gravity can help the return flow of the body fluid. This is to srimulate circulatory flow in the direction of the heart and of the main lymph glands which lie in the limbs, in your groin and your armpits, with smaller ones in your elbows and knees. So if you have swelling in your legs, you should aim to rest as much as possible with your foot above the level of your hip. You should have your leg on a pillow as a hard surface will hinder the circulatory flow. If you have to sit on a chair with your feet on the floor, try and straighten your knee and lift your leg upwards every so often, to aid the fluid flow. 
For swelling in the hands or the lower part of the arm, normally it is sufficient to support the arm in a sling holding the arm at shoulder level. If you have in the upper arm, you should try and lift it above your head at regular intervals through out the day and tense the muscles. For swelling over your back or abdominal area, try to lie flat as much as possible, rather than sitting down or standing up.
Applying Ice On Sports Injuries
Cryotherapy, better known as cold treatments are generally accepted as the easiest and safest immediate measure to reduce internal bruising and bleeding, relieving pain and controlling swelling in injured tissues.
You can use a bowl of ice cold water to immerse an injured hand or foot. A wet towel containing ice can be used to wrap round an injury. If using an ice pack or frozen packet of food you must protect your skin with some sort of oli like baby or olive oil or a wet towel. If you don't the ice packet is likely to pull the skin away when you take it off. You can buy special freezer packs which can be refrigerated. A chemical freezer pack can be put in your sports bag in case an injury occurs as when you strike it the chemical mix produces an instant ice pack.
You should never put ice on to the skin if you have a circulatory disorder. You should always remember that cold therapy can cause skin breakdownif it is used incorrectly. As long as the skin is intact, you can safely apply iceat hourly or 2 hourly intervals to control the swelling which continues to form for the first day or two after an injury, but if the skin becomes irritated or uncomfortable, you should stop until it is back to normal.
There is no set time for each ice application but for a general rule 15 minutes is good. If you have sensitive skin, you may only be able to tiolerate a few minutes, others can stand ice baths for up to half an hour each time. Provided that you can see the skin colour changes after your ice application, you know you have achieved the required affect.
Hot and Cold Therapy
The aim of ice application to an injury is to increase bloodflow in to and out of the area. A similar effect can be had by applying hot and cold alternately and this may be more comfortable for you than ice alone. This also can be done 48 days after you have used only ice application. You can use hot and cold packs which I sell here. Other ways are by using the wet method, ehich entail using two buckets or bowls of water, one iced water and the other hot as you can stand. You then submerse the injured part or limb in to the hot bowl for a few seconds and then take it out and dip it in to the cold bowl. repeat this for about ten minutes or until you see your skin change colour.
As with ice, do not use if you have circulatory disorders or your skin is sore. Otherwise this can be repeated in intervals up to three or four times a day. When you are recovering from an injury, contrast bathing eases the part enough to allow you greater range of movement, so it maybe possible to start easy exercises first while you are using the technique.
Therapy Heat
Where as Cold therapy can be applied immediately after an injury has ocurred and for as long as swelling, pain and bruising is still there, heat application should only be done during the recovery stages of rehabilitation. Heat application increases blood to the skin under the source of the heat. This will increase internal bleedingor swelling in the immediate area. So this is the reason heat should not be used for first aid after an injury has just taken place.
Heat should be used later on during recovery stages to relieve muscle tightness, which will help with relaxation.