Common Sports Injuries - and How M.A.T. Helps You Heal
Sports injuries can put a damper on your athletic pursuits and everyday activities. Whether you're an amateur athlete or a competitive sportsperson, dealing with muscle pain, tightness, and imbalances can be frustrating. At Dynamic Fitness, we're dedicated to helping you overcome these obstacles through our specialized Muscle Activation Technique (M.A.T.) therapy.
Discover how M.A.T. can help you restore balance and strength, leading to a wider range of motion, increased muscle strength, and improved joint stability. Our non-invasive treatment targets the root causes of muscle weaknesses and imbalances, enhancing your overall performance and reducing pain.
Ready to reclaim your active lifestyle? Contact us today to schedule your consultation and experience the Dynamic Fitness difference.
Common Sports Injuries
Common sports injuries are varied and can affect different parts of the body, depending on the type of sport and the intensity of the activity. That said, there are several that clients come into our training center with:
Sprained Ankles: Often caused by rolling, twisting, or turning your ankle awkwardly. This can stretch or tear the ligaments that help hold your ankle bones together. This injury is particularly common in sports that involve a lot of running, jumping, or sudden changes in direction, such as basketball, soccer, pickleball, and tennis.
Hamstring Strains: These occur when one or more of the muscles that run along the back of your thigh get stretched too far or even tears. It often happens during activities involving bursts of speed. This injury is common in sports like track and field, soccer, and football.
Tennis Elbow: Known medically as lateral epicondylitis, this injury is a result of overusing the muscles and tendons in your forearm near the elbow joint. It causes pain and tenderness on the outside of the elbow. It's not just tennis as the name would imply. Whenever making repetitive arm and wrist movements, such as in golf, you may end up with this condition.
Groin Pulls: Overstretching or tearing of the muscles of your inner thigh or front hip often causes these. They are common in sports that involve sudden movements of the legs.
Shin Splints: AKA medial tibial stress syndrome, this is characterized by pain along the front of your lower leg. This injury along the shinbone (tibia) is common among runners due to increased activity without proper conditioning. But if you participate in a sport that involves a lot of running on hard surfaces you may also find yourself with shin split pain. Note: this can also result from overuse, improper footwear, or poor running mechanics.
ACL Tears: Knee injuries are also widespread among athletes. The Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in your knee can tear during activities that involve sudden stops or changes in direction, jumps, or awkward landings. ACL tears can occur during activities like dance/cheer, soccer, and basketball.
Shoulder Injuries: These include dislocations, separations, and rotator cuff injuries, often caused by falls, heavy lifting, or repetitive overhead motions like throwing or swimming.
Patellar Tendinitis: Also known as Jumper's Knee, this injury affects your patellar tendon, causing pain and tenderness around your knee cap. It often results from repetitive jumping activities. Think: basketball.
Stress Fractures: Overuse can cause small cracks in bones, commonly in the weight-bearing bones of the lower leg and foot. Improper technique or poor conditioning usually aggravates this condition.
What is M.A.T. and How Does it Help Address These Injuries?
Muscle Activation Techniques (M.A.T.) is a specialized form of Kinesiology that focuses on identifying and correcting muscular imbalances, joint instability, and biomechanical inefficiencies. It uses biomechanics to address the root causes of muscle dysfunction rather than just treating the symptoms.
Muscle Activation Techniques (M.A.T.) is particularly effective for treating common sports injuries such as muscle strains, ligament sprains, tendonitis, and joint pain. M.A.T. is a specialized approach we use at Dynamic Fitness that focuses on identifying and correcting these muscular imbalances, joint instability, and biomechanical inefficiencies. By targeting the root causes of common sports injuries, M.A.T. aims to restore proper muscle function and enhance overall performance. This method is particularly effective in addressing injuries by reactivating inhibited muscles and improving joint stability.
Once we complete your fitness assessment, we'll move forward emphasizing the importance of muscle symmetry and balance. This is key for athletes! Sports injuries often occur due to imbalances where certain muscles are overused while others are underutilized. By restoring balance, M.A.T. helps to distribute physical stress more evenly across the body, reducing the likelihood of injury recurrence. This holistic approach ensures that all muscles work together efficiently, which is crucial for both injury prevention and rehabilitation.
By using targeted exercise, manual palpation, and isometric contractions, our goal is to re-establish neuromuscular communication and improve the muscle's ability to contract efficiently!
M.A.T. for Sports Rehab & Regaining an Active Lifestyle
As kinesiologists and M.A.T. exercise specialists, we operate on the principle that muscle weakness or inhibition can lead to compensatory patterns and, eventually, to injury. By assessing and improving the contractile efficiency of muscles, M.A.T. aims to restore proper muscle function & joint alignment and stability, thereby reducing pain and enhancing performance.
Here's what to expect when you visit Dynamic Fitness at one of our convenient locations in Tampa Bay. Our process begins with:
A detailed assessment to identify muscles that are not functioning optimally and injury history
A customized treatment plan using specific techniques to 'activate' these muscles
Continuous reassessment taking into account your unique biomechanics
This personalized methodology ensures that the root causes of dysfunction are addressed, leading to more effective and lasting rehabilitation.
M.A.T. is particularly effective in addressing chronic injuries that have not responded well to traditional rehabilitation methods. Chronic injuries often involve long-standing muscle inhibition and compensatory movement patterns. M.A.T. targets these deep-seated issues.
Let's reactivate dormant muscles and retrain the body to move correctly. After all, exercise truly is our best medicine. This targeted approach can lead to significant improvements in pain levels, mobility, and overall function, allowing athletes to return to their sport more quickly and safely. Call today or book your fitness assessment online today!