COR Clinic: Physical Therapy

Introduction To Bike Racing Seminar: Saturday 10/22/2011

2011-09-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Know your injury rates

2008-10-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

As you can see by the above figure, depending on the sport, injury rates change based on the types of exposure the athlete receives to external stimuli and space in which the athlete consumes. As you can see as the amount of contact with other athletes in the sport occurs the injury rate increases. Also compounding this injury rate is when the athlete moves in space with another athlete. Cycling is an outlier to most sports because the most common cause of injury is accidents with automobiles.

Please do your homework and find out the incident of injury, and types of injuries that occur in the sport that child participating in. You can find out this information by contacting your teams head coach, local sport associations or your local sports medicine specialist.

Figure from Cheng et al (2000) Pediatrics.
Sports Injuries: An Important Cause of Morbidity in Urban Youth

Adolescent Group Training

2008-09-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

COR Clinic has recently expanded its 90th St and Via Linda office. This has allowed us to provide extensive open floor space for group training sessions.
COR Clinic is going to start providing group "Core training" and "Form and Function" training for adolescent athletes. It is tentatively going commence in September 2008. Please call 480.272.7638 to schedule an appointment for group training.

Responsibility for athletic youth injuries

2008-07-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

When talking to parents and their youth athlete at COR Clinic we find that they are highly under educated on how to prevent injuries in there child’s sport, which is truly unfortunate. I guess they assume that the coach is going to watch out for their kids, but when it comes down to it, everyone should be informed because prevention of injury crosses lines of all play.
As you can see by figure 1 “Responsibility Hierarchy” emery et al show that prevention of injuries are the responsibility of all who participate within sports: the athlete, parents, coaches, sports organizations and government agencies that govern over the sports themselves.

What I want parents to understand is that they have responsibility along with those whom govern the sport (coaches and officials). I cannot emphasises this enough, so please do not hand off the responsibility to someone else, take responsibility which will therefore allow your kids to take responsibility of there actions on the field.

There are many factors that go into prevention of injury. Lets take a look at figure 2 from emery et al "Factors affecting risk of injury." As you can see there are host (athlete) factors and environmental factors. There are more host factors as compared to environmental factors therefore monitoring the the youth athlete is important.

As you can see the gender is important factor because boys and girls go through extremely different hormonal difference and without proper understanding of the differences injuries can occur. This will require that the parent talk to there physician or physical therapist about these changes to understand these differences.

As we all know, boys and girls tend to have extremely different maturity levels throughout childhood. Girls tend to be more focused and mature at an earlier age as compared to boys. Boys tend to have more sporadic growth spurts as compared to girls much of it during puberty.
Growth spurts are important to monitor. When a child is in a period of growing rapidly, attention should take place to make sure there coordination is not lacking, for it can lead to injury. If it is found that there coordination is lacking the parent and coach should understand it will take some time for there child athlete to regain their coordination this period is called maturation, we will cover what to do in future blog segments.

Physical condition along with athletic skill is important in performance in the sport along with injury prevention. It is well known that athletes regardless of age are more prone to injury if they are in poor shape as compared to those who are in good shape. Therefore making sure that your child is in good shape for there sport prior to competition is important to prevent injury. Level of skill is important too. For example if your child is a 10 year old soccer player and all the kids are able to dribble around other competitors and your child is not able too, your child would more than likely be tripped more often when some is stealing the ball away from them, which would potentially incrase the risk of injury from falls that they cannot avoid due to poor skill.

Cognitive level as well as temperament is very important in the prevention of injury. If the youth athlete is not able to understand how their sport is played and the rules at which it is governed by they can put themselves into compromised positions in relation to other youth athletes around them.

As you can see there are many factors that go into the foundation of injury prevention for youth athletes. It is important to have a foundation of understanding among each factor and communicate with each level of the responsibility hierarchy to prevent injury.

Please contact COR Clinic for further information on any of the above subject at 480.272.7638. We look forward toward your comments.

Adolescent Athlete: Learning about the adolescent athlete

2008-07-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

Learning about the adolescent athlete

COR Clinic sees many adolescent athletes each day receiving services in sports performance and or physical therapy. Though we have many goals with these athletes, it is one of our main goals to teach them and their parents about the prevention of injury.

Did you know: Approximately 30 million children and teenagers participate in organized sports. (Best, et al, 2006)

Communication between the health professional, adolescent athlete and their parents is important due to the increased level of participation now seen in youth sports. As many you well know, society now places more importance on children becoming a professional athlete than ever before. It is not uncommon for teens to train 20 or more hours a week or for youngsters as young as 6 years to play organized hockey or soccer and travel with select teams to other towns and communities to compete on a regular basis. (Caine et al, 2006). Since the level of participation has increased over the past several decades so have injuries related to sport. Many studies now show that more than one in three adolescents seek medical attention for a sport injury every year (Emery et al 2006, Best 2006). Exercise-related injuries were the most common cause of pediatric injuries accounting for 19% to 29% of all injuries in this population. (Caine et al 2006).

Did you know: 65% of all exercise-related injury visits to the emergency room in 2000 and 2001 (out of 4.3 million visits) are sustained by individuals 19 years of age or younger. (Caine et al 2006)

With this type of information one would wonder why a parent would want their child to play sports if injuries are so common. But sports and exercise are more important today than ever before due to our extremely sedentary society. Sports and exercise are important for children because it builds important lifelong fitness habits that can prevent disease process, socialization habits that can promote team work, and fortitude that promotes working through difficult situations.

Learn: “A popular message from health promotion advocates is that if we can make physical activity a lifestyle choice at a young enough age, the public health benefits will be considerable. One downside to participation, however, is exposure to injury risk. In both elite and recreational sport populations, every sport entails some degree of injury risk. Therefore, strategies to promote safe participation and to prevent injuries are paramount.” (Emery et al, 2006)

Since The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that one half of all sports injuries in children are preventable (Best, 2006), it is therefore important to work with physical therapists, physicians, strength coaches and sports coaches to learn what to look for to prevent injury.

In the coming weeks COR Clinic staff will provide information to help inform the public on injury prevention and sports medicine topics as it relates to the adolescent athlete.

For further information please contact COR Clinic at 480.272.7638.

What is Physical Therapy

2008-06-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Physical Therapy encompasses examination, treatment and instruction of patients to detect, assess, prevent, correct, alleviate and limit physical disability, movement dysfunction, bodily malfunction and pain from injury, disease and any other bodily and mental conditions. It also includes the administration, interpretation and evaluation of tests and measurements of bodily functions and structures, along with planning, administration, evaluation, and modification of treatment and instruction. A Doctor of Physical Therapy uses physical measures, activities, and devices for preventive and therapeutic purposes with the provision of consultative, educational and other advisory services for the purpose of reducing incidents and severity of physical disability, movement dysfunction, bodily malfunction and pain.

At COR Clinic we strive to provide the above services in a 1-1 setting with a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Our Doctors of Physical therapy see each of our patient for up to one full hour or more(depending on the needs of the patient) which allow for a superior level of customer service and quality of care.

Our COR Clinic Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Blog is designed to provide information and address questions one might have as it relates to the above information.