Preventing Sporting Injuries

A local sports centre is wanting to provide its members with information on how to prevent sporting injuries. They have asked you to review the scientific literature and provide a summary document that includes a series of recommendations on how to prevent injury, which they can communicate to their members

Sporting injuries are a significant problem when considering dropout rate in physical activity (Indriðadóttir et al., 2015) therefore a wide range of research has been undertaken to determine recommendations on whether different techniques can prevent injuries from occurring. Sports injuries can be acute such as a sprain or chronic such as a ruptured ACL, therefore prevention is necessary to make sure both types of injuries do not occur.
However when reviewing evidence into the effects of stretching when not part of a warm up results have been opposing. There are 4 different types of stretching; static, dynamic, ballistic and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF), all of which have been researched in order to come to a conclusion on which type is the most effective. In order for stretching to prevent injuries there needs to be an element of flexibility in the muscle-tendon unit. If the contractile elements of a muscle are high then more energy can be absorbed therefore reducing the chance of injury to a muscle. However, if the contractile elements are low little energy is absorbed, which results in stiffness and reduced flexibility of the tendons and increases the chance of injury (Witvrouw et al., 2004). Sections of evidence have supported the use of PNF techniques compared to the other techniques due to using alternating contractions and straining the stretch-reflex complex, therefore allowing high energy absorption. (Shellock & Prentice., 1985). Although there has been high amounts of research in this area there are no conclusive statements on the relationship between stretching and athletic injury (Witvrouw et al., 2004). Other research conducted in this field have investigated the effects on different sports due to the different strains put on the skeletal
When considering the impact of injuries, the elderly have a significantly higher dropout rate due to the severity and its impact on quality of life. Many studies have researched why this is. They have concluded that due to the natural process of muscle mass decreasing once past the age of 25, one half of skeletal muscle has been lost by the time people turn 80 years old. Due to this large reduction, musculoskeletal injuries increase rapidly (Paul et al., 2003). In order to reduce the impact of sarcopenia it has been advised that elderly populations participate in eccentric resistance type training (Paul et al., 2003). Many studies have shown the positive effects of resistance training, many demonstrating increased muscle mass in older generations (Borde et al., 2015). Eccentric resistance training can also counteract the injuries required from isotonic contractions. During an eccentric contraction the muscle is considerably lengthened due to a greater muscular force, this causes disruption to the alignment of sarcomeres as well as causing them to overstretch (Dias et al., 2015). When the sarcomere becomes overstretched damage occurs and therefore an injury to the muscle is caused (Proske & Morgan, 2001). When participating in repeated resistance training, the number of actin and myosin filaments increase as well as the number of