SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) — With excitement building around Sunday’s big game kickoff, it can be easy to forget the ways athletes push their bodies to play at such a high level.
Injuries are part of the game and professional athletes playing in the Super Bowl know how much time recovery can take. Kelsey Rynkiewicz, director of athletic healthcare and assistant professor of athletic training at Springfield College, said ACL knee injuries can take close to a year for rehabilitation. “Most of the time, the rehabilitation of it is focusing on getting them stronger, making sure they don’t have any imbalances anywhere, working on any mechanical issues that they have,” she explained.
Preventing injuries from happening is exactly why she’s there. “I think that’s a big part of what we do, as well as the education piece, like educating parents, coaches, athletes of these are the things you should be doing and helping them learn how to kind of use their bodies and move them the right way,” Rynkiewicz added.
Rynkiewicz noted if athletes don’t take the steps to recover from previous injuries, that can land them right back in the trainer’s room. “Because if we have an injury that’s going on at the knee or the ankle, that now predisposes us to an injury occurring further up the kinetic chain in the body, so everything impacts each other,” she said.
Dr. Martin Luber, president of New England Orthopedics, agreed and said education is key for athletes preventing injury and reinjury. “I think really being thoughtful about an ongoing and consistent program for both strength training, but also pliability was, you know, Tom Brady would talk about or range of motion techniques are important to try and reduce the risk of injury,” he explained.
Luber emphasized making sure athletes are not isolating body parts from activity. “While taping and other things have been shown to be helpful, it’s really those strengthening exercises and targeting maybe the less used muscles or at least less thought about muscles can help with injury prevention,” he added.
Luber also pointed out that when athletes are tired, they seem to have a higher incidence of injury. “So late in the second half or the first half of the game, you know, as things are winding down, but people are getting tired,” he said.
He recommended strategic substitutions when athletes return to sport. “Maybe they sub out at the end of a soccer half, so that they’re not playing in the 45th minute, until their strength and particularly endurance start to improve,” Luber said.
To all athletes, the extra time icing your knee or stretching pays off in the long run.
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