Football is an intense sport that combines high-speed movements with high-speed collisions. These elements can cause significant injuries and pain for the players. Football-related pain has several potential sources, including traumatic injuries, heat-related injuries and overuse injuries. You can help prevent these injuries by following certain common guidelines.
Traumatic Injury-related Pain
Traumatic knee injuries are a common source of football-related pain. Potential injuries to your knee include ligament damage and damage to cushioning pads of cartilage called menisci. Common sources of shoulder pain include shoulder separations, which involve damage to the joint that connects your shoulder blade and collarbone, and injuries to a ring of protective cartilage called the labrum, which surrounds your shoulder socket. You can also easily sprain your ankle while playing football. Concussion, which results from a severe impact to the head, occurs when your brain bounces against the interior of your skull, and it is a common threat to football players. This condition doesn't always produce pain, but can trigger a headache or an unusual sensation of head pressure.
Heat-related Pain
At the beginning of the season, football players frequently engage in vigorous physical activity in environments that feature both high temperatures and high humidity. If you're not careful, these conditions can easily overwhelm your body's natural temperature control mechanisms and trigger abnormally high amounts of sweating and loss of salt and other important minerals. If you experience these symptoms, you can develop painful cramping in any of the muscles in your major muscle groups. If you don't cool your body down and replenish your fluids once cramping begins, you can develop potentially life-threatening conditions called heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
Overuse-related Pain
If you overuse your body while playing football, you can develop lower back pain or more general back pain. Overuse can also result in patellar tendinitis, a painful condition triggered by inflammation in the tendon that runs between your kneecap and tibia. In addition, if you practice too frequently, you can develop a condition called overtraining syndrome, which robs your body of its normal ability to recover from the physical toll of your activities.
Prevention
You can take a number of steps to prevent football-related injuries, the Sports Injury Clinic and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons report. These include warming up thoroughly before practicing or playing, wearing appropriate protective equipment, maintaining a proper fluid intake, eating a well-balanced diet and taking supplemental vitamins and minerals. Additional preventive steps include acknowledging and reporting any signs of pain or discomfort and training your body properly to withstand football's stresses on your body. Ask your doctor for more information on potential sources of football-related pain, as well as information on how to treat specific football-related injuries.
