exercise | Cardy Sports Clinic

When we get injured, whether it is through running a 5k or playing netball, getting back to full fitness can be difficult. You can completely rehabilitate the injury, but get back to doing what you love and break down again. Making sure you are hitting specific markers or goals you set is key to make sure that when you return to your activity of choice your body is as ready as possible.

What is sport specific rehab?

Similar to normal stages of rehab, this is where you get your body accustomed to the requirements of the sport or activity you will be participating in. For a lot of sports this will involve multi-directional running. Therefore, you would tend to start with straight line running, building up in stages until you are able to complete change of direction exercises.

Sport specific rehab should cover all aspects of movement, use of equipment and making it as specific to your role as possible. This rehab should be fun and enjoyable throughout, talk with your therapist or if you are doing this yourself, break down your routine when you perform your activity and build this back stage by stage. Be adventurous in your development of your plan, make it challenging but attainable.

For sports such as Netball, you will want to also do positional specific exercises. If you play in a defensive or attacking position you will want to get yourself a netball stand and have a netball. Nowadays, these are well-priced and quality pieces of kit.

How to use different types of equipment to hit your goal?

Once you have your netball stand, you can then simulate match specific events for your position. If you play in goal attack, you will want to simulate jumping into the D, catching a ball, keeping your balance and shooting. Having equipment that is specific to your sport can help you in a few ways.

Helps with positioning
Can have a greater variety in your rehab exercises
Makes match simulation far easier

Having a variety of kit at your disposal can help to develop a sport specific rehab plan that is interesting and enjoyable to complete. Whether that is simply some collapsible cones to run around, a football goal for you to practice shooting or an agility kit to help with change of direction exercises.

Sport Specific Rehab should be the best part of all rehab. It should be the reward for all the effort you put into your early exercises, that can often feel very boring and monotonous. Get in touch with your nearest therapist, then you can formulate a full rehab plan to get you back to your best.

I have limited space, how can I still do this?

A lot of equipment is manufactured to accommodate all walks of life. Netball stands are small pieces of kit that can hide away in a corner of the garden, which is perfect if you have a small space or a large space. It is fully manageable for everyone. Football goals don’t have to have a solid frame, you can buy pop-up goals; in this case the goal is more a target for you to aim your passes or shots at.

However big the space is you have available, there are many pieces of equipment that can work for you. Find something that works, and have fun with your rehab!

We are always told that warming-up before a game can benefit us, but how often do you find yourself wondering, why do I have to spend so much of my time on it? Well the idea of the warm-up is to get the body fully prepared for the activity that lays ahead. When the warm-up is of a certain quality and length, it will produce physiological and psychological effects on the body. Whilst it has also been shown that a warm-up can reduce the risk of injury through stretching of the muscle-tendon unit; this in-turn allows for an increased stretch with less tension when exposed to an external load.

What are the two main types of warm-up?

General Warm-up: This incorporates more general movements rather than specific movements. This type of warm-up will tend to use generic body movements and activities that are unrelated to the specific neuromuscular actions that are used in their particular activity or sport. An example of an activity that takes place in this stage is dynamic and static stretching.
Sport Specific Warm-up: This is the application of big muscle group actions with rhythmic movements that provide a rehearsal of skill for the activity ahead. This is the performance of actions that directly relate to your sport examples are; throwing a ball to prepare for cricket or baseball, hitting a ball with your racquet for tennis and shooting a ball into a net for basketball or netball.

What happens physiologically during a warm-up?

Physiological effects can be defined as the effects that take place within the body.

A warm-up will produce a higher muscle temperature, an increase in local muscle oxygen availability, increase in the uptake of oxygen within the muscles and lower the blood lactate level. There will be an increase in blood flow around the body and muscles with an increase in oxygenated blood being delivered to the working muscles. This is due to the increase in heart rate, increase in stroke volume and an increase in breathing rate. This increased breathing rate helps to oxygenate the blood whilst also removing the waste products from the blood.

Faster contraction/relaxation in the muscles
There is a greater economy of movement in the muscles through the decreased viscous resistance
Due to the higher temperatures, oxygen is released more readily by the haemoglobin
Facilitated nerve transmission and muscle metabolism
Increase in the blood flow through active tissues due to vasodilation

What effect does a warm-up have psychologically?

This is the effect the warm-up has on the mental aspect of physical activity.

Whether this helps to motivate the athlete or bringing a level of focus to their game. It has been reported that the specific skill based warm-ups consisting of movements or techniques involved in the chosen physical activity can improve accuracy and co-ordination. Further to this, there is a notion that preparation before completing the activity can sufficiently prepare the athlete to compete at their highest level without fear of injury.

Ultimately, it does come down to the athletes personal beliefs and feelings; if they believe that a warm-up is beneficial prior to their activity then their performance levels are likely benefit directly from a warm-up. However, if their belief is that a warm-up provides no true benefit to their performance; a warm-up may provide little to no effect, however, the risk of injury will be increased.

Structure of a warm-up

Exercise	For How Long	Rationale for Use
Run or team based game	5-10 minutes	Elevates heart rate which increases the blood flow around the body.
Variety of dynamic stretches: squats, lunges, sidesteps, skips, bounds (naming a few exercises there are a wide variety available)	5-10 minutes	This prepares the joints and muscles for activity. Placing the muscle-tendon junction on stretch to prepare it for the external load. All of these exercises should be dynamic in nature with limited use of static stretching. The main aim is to maintain the temperature in the tissues so they are ready for the activity.
Sport-specific: These should have exercises that steadily progress through in intensity. For example, if the sport involves throwing and catching you would aim to start off doing small underarm throws and catches. This would then progress onto overhead throwing over a greater distance, with the view to then incorporate the running aspect to familiarise the body with the levels of co-ordination needed	5-15 minutes	This will fully prepare the athlete for the particular movements involved in their sport. This further helps to prevent injury whilst further incorporating the psychological effects previously mentioned.

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