Training Injury Prone Athlete
What causes some athletes to be prone to injury?
• Contraction Strength: the athlete is powerful / fast-twitch (great neuromuscular development & efficiency)
• Poor Positions: the athlete struggles to use adequate ROM in order to achieve the shapes needed to play their sport
• Chronological Age: an athlete who is older (here, in the traditional sense) will have less elasticity (quite literally) and resiliency for physical change. In other words, older athletes don't morph their bodies to the demands of the sport (Dear coaches... that Masters athlete will probably always lack t-spine extension).
• Biological Age: an athlete who is "older" here has more hormonal imbalances, more joint abuse due to their lifestyle and overall has aged with less grace
• Muscular Fatigue: An athlete's local fatigue will prevent them from maintaining optimal motor patterns For example, fatigue in the lats and biceps prevents proper smoothness and eccentric control in a chest-to-bar pull-up, requiring more strength of the rotator cuff to keep the humeral head from thrashing about.
• Diaphragmatic Fatigue: The diaphragm is an important spine stabilizer as it allows IAP (intra-abdominal pressure) to climb and maintain a rigid trunk. A taxed diaphragm -because of demands for breath & movement- means bracing (and spine protection) fades as fatigue climbs.
• Accumulated Fatigue: An athlete with a higher training volume who is sub-optimally recovered for their next session is more likely to have both overuse (chronic) and traumatic (acute) injuries.
The following is a conversation about how to best train injury prone athletes...
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