Injuries Can Be Prevented

By Dr. Michael Yessis

For www.EliteFTS.com

In the last few years, the number of injuries to professional and collegiate players has increased greatly, especially in the early season. Every week there are news articles about star players sustaining injuries, and fans complain that if only the athletes weren’t injured, the team would be having a much better season. In addition, the number of injuries to strength athletes is also quite high, as evidenced on the Elite Q&A forum.

All injuries are not preventable. However, the number of injuries can be reduced significantly through proper training. While this appears to be an obvious answer, it is dependent upon what is meant by training. To most coaches and athletes, training means to increase the amounts of strength, flexibility, power, and other factors. This is valuable and needed training. However, when it comes to injuries, this is only one half of the equation. Technique is also needed to prevent injury and improve performance.

Increasing physical qualities such as strength and power is not sufficient unless the physical qualities relate specifically to the athlete’s technique. General physical training or improving the basic physical qualities will show the most improvement in performance with novices but will have very little effect on high level players who need physical qualities specific to their technique. That is, they need training specific to the skills that they must execute during game play.

Injuries occur most often during the execution of game skills or key exercises such as the squat, glute ham raise, deadlift, and bench press. The reason for this is simple. Injuries have a neurological basis. In other words, injuries are caused by ineffective coordination of the nervous and muscular systems. They are caused when there is a disruption in the execution of the skill, which is related to the athlete’s neurological ability to execute that skill well, and in each of the physical qualities that are responsible for carrying out the execution. For example, hamstring injuries most often occur during a run and sometimes during a change in direction. When a runner lands on the heel of the foot as opposed to the ball or the whole foot as he should, his chances of hamstring injury are increased greatly because the stress on the hamstring will be great when the landing occurs.

Note that the stress on the ankle, knee, hip, and even lower back is also quite great, and injuries can occur to these joints just as easily as to the hamstring. Some runners injure the hamstring muscle when they forcefully contract it at a time when the muscle should be relaxing such as contracting the hamstring and glutes during the push-off when they should be “relaxing” the muscles.

Changing running technique and performing exercises specific to when and how the hamstring muscle is in action will go a long way in preventing injury. For example, many athletes do leg curls to strengthen the hamstrings. However, such strengthening does not prevent the hamstring injuries that typically occur up at the hip joint. Thus, to duplicate what occurs in the running stride, it is necessary for the athlete to do hip joint extensions to engage the hamstring muscle as it is used in the running stride. The best exercise for this is the pawback with active cords.

An analogous situation exists in the shoulder joint. Most often, athletes will do medial and lateral rotation with the elbow alongside the body to strengthen the muscles of the rotator cuff. The amount of weight used for these exercises is usually quite light in the range of 5–10 lbs. However, in throwing, the arm is out in line with the shoulders. So the rotator cuff muscles must be strengthened with the arm in this position and with the use of heavier weights. For example, when I trained Todd Marinovich in a build-up to when he broke all the high school and some collegiate records for quarterback, he was capable of doing the T-bench medial rotation using 80 lbs of resistance. He never had any shoulder injuries and was capable of throwing the ball almost the length of the field. He could throw so hard that it was often difficult to get a receiver who could handle his passes.

Strength coaches do a great job improving the athlete’s strength and power, especially general strength and power. However, it is rare to find emphasis placed on specific strength and power as it relates to the specific execution of a skill. As a result, we still see injuries occurring to athletes at all levels. If we more closely examined how the athletes execute the basic skills of running, throwing, jumping, kicking, and hitting and the basic strength exercises such as the squat and bench press and were capable of correcting and improving the players’ technique, we would see fewer injuries. If the better technique was coupled with strength, speed, and power, we would see even fewer injuries.

We should get away from the myth that if it “ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This comment ignores the fact that you can improve the player’s technique or modify it to make it more effective. For some reason, even though most coaches agree that technique plays a major role in all sports, they still believe that each athlete develops and perfects his own technique. Because of this, doing additional work to improve technique is usually considered a detriment, not a positive way to improve performance.

What is overlooked is that all sports skills are learned acts. You are not born with the ability to throw, kick, jump, run, squat, or bench. Each skill is learned mainly through trial and error as you grow and mature, and it usually takes hundreds of repetitions before you master the ability to execute the skill with excellent technique if given proper instruction. The more complex the skill, the longer it takes to master. You may be born with the rudiments of being able to do the basic skills, but they are in very rough form. These skills must still be perfected in order for the athlete to do the best that he is capable.

By working on technique to improve performance, the athlete will not become mechanical in execution of the skills. He will usually be making fine adjustments so that it becomes a natural movement pattern, and he will have a good feel for the skill developed. Everyone can fine tune technique within his or her innate abilities. When the athlete works on technique, especially if he uses specialized strength and flexibility exercises that duplicate what takes place in execution of the skill (or should take place), the athlete develops a muscular feel for the action. This feeling is incorporated into the neuromuscular system so that when the athlete executes the modified or new technique, it will feel natural to him.

Thus, the bottom line is that if you wish to cut down on the number of injuries, and in many cases completely prevent them, you must work on technique. In all of my years of working with athletes—and I have worked with hundreds if not thousands—we have never had injuries after doing specialized strength and explosive exercises and perfecting technique. When injuries did occur, it was during game play when the athlete was hit by another person, had someone land on his ankle, or had some other unforeseen situation happen that was impossible to control. However, you can control how the athlete performs by improving technique and his physical abilities specific to the technique. This is the key to injury prevention and player performance improvement.

Dr. Michael Yessis is a professor emeritus in biomechanics and kinesiology and president of Sports Training Inc., a diversified company that does specialized work with athletes and develops specialized training equipment. Dr. Yessis is the foremost U.S. expert on Russian training methods. He has been to Russia multiple times, has worked with Russian coaches such as Yuri Verkhoshansky, and has translated and published Russian training articles in the Fitness and Sports Review International for over 29 years. He also wrote the number one article read in Muscle and Fitness (Kinesiology, Training Notebook) for over 25 years. Visit his website at www.dryessis.com.

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