What Is Sports Medicine And Why Is It Important?
If you lead a healthy and active lifestyle, any injury can prevent you from physical activity. If you do have a sports injury, you need to heal quickly so you can get back to training and practice. Sports medicine doctors have received specialised training that enables them to rehabilitate injuries in children, adults and professional athletes.
Very often sports medicine is handled by a team of people who have different levels of speciality. The team may be headed up by a general practitioner and may include other specialists such as
- Physiotherapists who can assist with rehabilitation
- Athletic trainers who can customise exercise and training programs for optimal results
- Dieticians to provide sound nutrition
This is because you may have special needs that require input from different professionals.
Injury Prevention Enables Consistent Training
Injuries can interfere with anyone’s training schedule, whether they are in a weight loss program, building muscle or training for an event or specific discipline. The vast range of injuries that can occur necessitate a teamwork approach to rehabilitation and injury prevention.
Some of the more common injuries that can occur as a result of sport and physical training include
- Sprains
- Fractures
- Problems in the shoulders and knees
- Cartilage injuries
- Eating disorders
- Tendonitis and torn ligaments
- Exercise-induced asthma
- Concussion
- Injuries sustained due to chronic or overuse
The more often and intensely you train, the more susceptible you will be to certain kinds of injuries like strains, sprains, shin splints, injuries to cartilage and tendonitis. Working with a dedicated sports medicine team means that an injury prevention approach can be adopted to keep you active.
Working with physiotherapists and other rehabilitation specialists who are focused on injury prevention ensures you have less downtime and more peak performance.
What Are The Benefits Of Sports Medicine?
Working with a professional team that is headed up by a general practitioner, and who are dedicated to your training program ensures you stay on track to achieve your fitness goals, working through any injuries and helping you to achieve peak physical fitness.
Receive Dedicated Care And Attention
You can receive specialised care from a general practitioner or specialist who is focused on sports-related injuries and support. This means you may be able to receive a higher level of care, support and treatment options than from a generalised healthcare provider. Your treatment team is all on the same page, in terms of what you want to achieve, and everyone is invested in helping you get it.
Injury Prevention Strategies
A sports medicine practitioner can offer you invaluable advice on weaknesses in the body to assist you with injury prevention. Preventing injury is more convenient than treating injuries, and a sports medicine team can assist you in optimising your athletic performance by avoiding some of the most common injuries.
Improve Your Athletic Performance
By working with a sports medicine general practitioner or team you can receive insights into how to improve your performance. A sports medicine practitioner can customise your training plan to give you a competitive edge so that you always perform at your best, highlighting your strengths and building up your weaknesses.
Have Access To Cutting Edge Treatments
A general practitioner who works in the field of sports medicine can give you early access to the latest treatment approaches to help you get back into training faster. If the end goal means reaching your fitness goals, then your sports medicine team will be aligned to help you achieve it.
Get The Right Nutrition All The Time
Eating a healthy and wholesome diet is an important part of staying fit and healthy, but when you are training for a specific event or level of fitness, your diet becomes even more important. Eating to manage inflammation, eating for endurance or for muscle gain is much easier and more attainable when you have dedicated nutritionists who are focused on your end goal.
Learn To Compete With The Best
What is sports medicine best at helping patients achieve? Match performance. Practice, training and fitness must all converge when you want to perform competitively, but competition performance is a skill all on its own. Get the right coaching to help you finish your event where you want to, from professionals who know what it takes to compete with the best and from people who have excelled in their areas of expertise.
Still have questions about what is sports medicine? It’s best to speak to a professional. Please contact us for an appointment with a general practitioner to discuss the way forward: (02) 9159 6903.
