Preventing repeat injuries in athletes 

When your clients are regularly engaging in physical activity—especially if it’s at a high intensity—they’ll almost inevitable get injured at some point. What often makes the biggest difference, though, is how an injury is managed and how an athlete’s rehab training plan is structured. It can determine whether they recover quickly or end up dealing with repeat injuries that drag out the healing process.

The first step to recovering from an injury is to protect the affected area. This helps prevent further tissue damage while the body enters the initial inflammatory phase, a necessary part of healing (1). Pain may be unpleasant, but it’s there to protect the body and usually fades over time. However, it often subsides before the injured tissue has fully healed. That’s why it’s easy to fall into the trap of resuming training too soon if you use pain as your only indicator of recovery. This is where education becomes a key part of an athletic therapist’s role—helping clients understand the importance of this early rest phase. In most cases, it involves a period of inactivity, which can lead to some level of deconditioning. But the longer the inactivity, the more pronounced the deconditioning (2). And that can increase the risk of relapse or further injury, which can delay recovery. To support an effective return to activity, it’s essential to understand what kind of injury your client has. For instance, muscle strains tend to heal faster than ligament sprains or bone injuries like stress fractures (3). Once the injury has been identified, the goal is to limit deconditioning by putting the right strategies in place as early as possible (4).

Cardiovascular activity, when well tolerated, can speed up the healing process by delivering more nutrients to the affected area. When an athlete has a limb injury, training the other limb can be surprisingly effective. Rather than causing lopsidedness, this helps slow muscle loss in the injured limb through a phenomenon known as cross education (5). It’s also important to assess the specific physical demands that will eventually be placed on the recovering joint or muscle. Is the goal to restore range of motion, build strength, improve endurance, or regain power? And how much? Making gradual, step-by-step progress toward those goals is often the key to a successful recovery. Of course, a generally healthy lifestyle also supports the healing process, especially getting at least seven hours of quality sleep every night and eating a varied, high-protein diet (6). 

Kinesiologists are trained to guide effective progress toward a return to physical activity. By working closely with athletes—and in collaboration with other health professionals when needed—they monitor the gradual recovery of physical abilities and make sure the progress is aligned with each client’s specific goals. Client feedback should play a central role in this process. Athletes need to learn to listen to their bodies—signs like excessive fatigue or pain during certain movements may indicate it’s too soon to move on to the next phase of rehabilitation (7). This collaborative approach, along with patience, discipline, and a positive mindset, helps athletes return to their full potential. In many cases, the training hours accumulated during injury recovery can even leave the body more resilient than it was before (8).

Nicolas Blanchette practises osteopathy and kinesiology with Ostéo-Solution in Saint-Eustache, located on Montreal’s North Shore. You can book an appointment with him at www.osteo-solution.com

This article provides general information only and does not replace the recommendations or care of a health professional.