If you’re an “injury prone” athlete, then you know full well that your next injury could be career ending. For all of us, injuries spell pain, stress, doctor’s appointments and more. It’s well worth looking for ways to prevent that from happening. You may not be able to prevent all your future injuries, but there are a few simple tips that can prevent many trips, falls, and other devastating injuries.
Once you’ve decided to do something about being injury prone, how do you know which injury prevention tip is really worth your time? David Starbuck Smith, a well-respected author, educator, and therapist in the field of exercise science shares a great list that would apply to all of us, seasoned athletes or not. He lists the following 7 tips in his proactive injury prevention article:
1 Restore Postural Balance
2 Vary Your Training
3 Maintain Flexibility
4 Stay Connected to your Body
5 Get Plenty of Sleep
6 Stay Hydrated
7 Meditate
Start By Shrinking The List
Each of these tips do have the potential to prevent injuries, but if you’re short on time, you’ll want to determine which one will give you the best bang for your buck. What you’re about to discover is that if you do the very first tip on David’s list with the right program, you will also be checking off tip number 2 thru 4 in the process.
Restoring Postural Balance
Many things promise to restore posture, but only one method provides the whole-body postural balance that will prevent a future injury. Devices that promise to ‘remind’ you to throw your shoulders back and sit up straight can’t produce lasting change because the right muscles aren’t being re-educated to hold your posture without you thinking about it. You’ll always be dependent on the device to remind you. Furthermore, these devices are only meant to remind you to throw your shoulders back and they aren’t able to help you correct misalignments of the feet, knees and ankles. The only program that can truly change whole-body posture is exercise based Postural Therapy. It is the only program aimed at improving your entire body’s balance head to toe, which in turn will help you prevent another injury.
One Solution, Many Benefits
In the decades that exercise based Posture Therapy has been around, it has helped countless athletes stay off the sidelines by improving their postural balance. Hall of Fame NFL player Brian Urlacher, credits the last 5 years of his career to Posture Therapy for keeping him in the game. You see, the better your body is stacked in gravity, the better you’ll be able to move and react to a ball or another player hurtling towards you. Athletes know their best asset to their sport is their body and how it’s trained. A well-toned physique is required to play at the top levels of any sport. The faster and more efficient your body can move and react, the better you’ll be at your sport and the fewer injuries you’ll sustain. The same principle applies to everyone else in our daily lives. Can your body react quickly enough if your toe hits a crack in the sidewalk? That’s the difference between catching yourself before you fall, and falling flat on your face.
When you incorporate exercise based Posture Therapy into your daily routine, you’ll feel your posture become balanced head to toe. As a result, you’ll prevent a lot of injuries, and you’ll feel a whole lot better too. Not only does Posture Therapy provide your body with postural balance, you’ll receive new and varied exercises weekly, improve your flexibility, and you’ll be more in tune with your body than ever before.
Posture Therapy Provides You With Varied Exercises
Another trademark of Posture Therapy is that you’ll be prescribed a wide variety of exercises that your body doesn’t currently perform. Each new exercise you master trains your body in a new way to move or respond. As a result, your body learns new and more efficient ways to react to the world around you.
Posture Therapy Improves Flexibility
Improved flexibility is another benefit of posture therapy. To achieve postural balance, the length and tension of every muscle group in your body has to be balanced. The muscles must have the right amount of stretch and strength to counteract each other. Since posture improvement can’t be achieved without proper flexibility, you can be confident that every Posture Therapy routine will include whole-body flexibility, balance, and strength work.
Posture Therapy Improves Your Mind-Body Connection
Exercise is one of the best ways to improve your mind-body connection. Your neurons must fire to tell your body to perform an exercise. In reverse, as your body moves, your mind has to keep up with where you are in space now compared to where you were before.
Maggie from the BetterUp health coaching program explains it this way: “Every time you move a muscle, sensory receptors send information to your brain about what’s happening. Doing this intentionally through exercise helps your mind become more aware of your body’s position in space, increasing your physical self-awareness.”
The more self-aware you are of your body, the less trips and falls you’ll experience. It makes sense that by improving your mind-body connection, you’ll be able to prevent silly injuries. With the varied exercises provided in a posture therapy program, you’ll have plenty of new mind-body connection practice each day.
Your Personal Injury Prevention Plan
Does staying off the sidelines and out of the doctor’s office appeal to you? There are lots of stand-alone programs that might help with each of David’s tips, but the one program that promises the most benefit is an exercise based Posture Therapy program. Posture Therapy programs that are personalized to your pain, medical history, posture type, and activity level are available at PTXTherapy.com, and can be done on your own in the comfort of home. If you’d rather book an appointment with a Posture Therapist in your area, search for a licensed therapist on this map. If you’re looking to change your title from “injury prone” to something a little more glamorous, then get started on a personalized posture program this week!
