With Spring Comes Outdoor Sports!

2021/05/04 Home Education and advice

Laval

Spring is here and this means many outdoor sports will be resuming soon! Whether your sport or activity of choice is golf, running, walking, or cycling, here are 2 tips to avoid injury and allow you to enjoy your favorite activities.

Warm Up Before Physical Activity

Warming up is the most important piece of advice. We often take these few minutes before our sporting activity for granted. It Is one of the biggest causes of muscle tears and strains, ligament sprains and stiffness. Take 5 minutes of your time to warm up. It will be of great benefit to you!

There are 2 ways to warm up: the general warm up and the activity specific warm up.

A general warm-up is low intensity cardiovascular exercise, including low intensity walking, jogging, or cycling.
A specific warm up is either an active stretching or an activity-specific strength training exercise.

🏃 Take for example running: the general warm up could be a brisk walk for 5 minutes and the specific warm up could be an active leg stretch such as swinging the leg back and forth for 2 minutes.

🏌️‍♀️ If we take golf as an example, the general warm-up could be a low intensity jog for 5 minutes and the specific warm up could be torso twists for 2 minutes.

Gradually increase the frequency, the duration and the intensity of the physical activity

entrainement printemps

For the first outdoor outdoor activity of the year or for a new activity you want to try, start with fairly low training parameters. Here are the 3 main parameters that can be increased over the weeks:

Frequency or the number of outings per week
Duration or the total time of the outing
Intensity or the speed of execution

Increase only one of the parameters at a time to give your body time to get used to the new workload and increase it only if no pain occurs.

🏃 Take running as an example:

For the first week, you can start with a frequency of 2 runs of 15 minutes at a slow speed.
For the second week, increase the frequency of outings to 3 times and keep the same time and intensity.
For the third week, increase the time of the outings to 20 minutes and keep the same frequency and intensity.

Despite the tips, I am afraid of injuring myself. What should I do?

If you frequently injure yourself when starting your activity in the spring, or if you want to avoid injuring yourself while starting a new activity, you may need a musculoskeletal evaluation by a physiotherapist. Following the assessment, the physiotherapist will give you advice and exercises specific to your condition.

Book an appointment at our clinic with a physiotherapist.

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I am not sure if physiotherapy can help me. What can I do?

It is normal to have questions when trying something new. We now offer the possibility to schedule a free orientation call with a therapist to help you decide if physiotherapy is right for you!

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