Musculoskeletal injury types plus 3 examples
- a reduction or loss of function or structure of a muscle, bone, ligament or tendon.
- lacerations or shearing injuries
- contusions or compression injuries
- muscle strains.
Explain muscle strains?
Strain Type Injuries: These occur when muscle fibres are stretched beyond their normal limits, usually due to excessive force. This can result in reduced or lost muscle function
Explain lacerations?
Laceration Injuries: Laceration injuries involve a cut to the skin or muscle by an external object (e.g., rugby boot studs) or by friction between surfaces (e.g., sliding on a court). This can lead to abrasions or more serious cuts.
Explain compression injuries?
Contusion or Compression Injuries: These occur when a compressive force is applied to muscles, bones, or joints, typically in contact sports. They can cause bruising (haematoma), fractures if bones are involved, or concussions
Classification of Injuries (5)
- Chronic
- Acute
- Overuse
- Surgical treatment
- Conservative treatment
Gait?
- how you move when you walk or run
Alternate gait? 3 effects
- Overtraining leading to refers to a situation where excessive training—beyond the body’s ability to recover—affects a person’s walking or running gait
- Increase injury risk: Altered gait can lead to an imbalance in how forces are distributed across the body
- Lead to long-term issues: If overtraining continues without recovery, it may lead to chronic conditions
- Affect performance: When the bodyis notfunctioning as efficiently due to an altered gait, athletic performance may decline.
Wolff’s Law =
highlights how tissues adapt to stress but also how excessive or repetitive stress without recovery leads to injuries.
How training affects injury (8) - explain them
- Recovery of tendons and bones post‑training
- Micro‑damage from training needs 24–72 hours to remodel
- Poor recovery increases risk of tendinopathy, stress fractures,
- Production of collagen
- Collagen lays down along lines of stress; appropriate loading plus nutrition (protein, vitamin C) strengthens tendons/ligaments.
- Excessive or very sudden loading disrupts collagenfibresfaster than they can remodel, weakening tissue and elevating injury risk.
- Volume of exercise and training error
- Rapid spikes in weekly load (distance, duration, sessions) are strongly linked with overuse injuries.
- Risk of injury from overloading
- High intensity, high volume, or too much competition creates mechanical stress that exceeds tissue tolerance.
- Manifestations include muscle strains, ligament sprains, bone stress injuries, and joint irritation.
- Risk of injury from underloading (going into competition unprepared)
- Insufficient chronic training load means tissues are under‑conditioned and have low capacity.
- When an athlete suddenly faces high competition demands, even normal match loads can exceed capacity and cause injury.
- Training errors (distance, duration, intensity of a run)
- Increasing more than ~10% per week, adding hills or speed work too quickly, or stacking hard sessions back‑to‑back are classic errors.
- Poor warm‑up, lack of strength work, and ignoring previous injury history further amplify risk.
- Pain‑monitoring (numerical pain rating scale, etc.)
- Regular pain scores (for example 0–10 before/after training) help detect early overload before structural injury occurs.
- Acute and chronic trauma
- Acute trauma = single high‑force event (tackle, fall, awkward landing) causing immediate injury.
- Chronic trauma = many small bouts of stress over time, leading to tendinopathy, stress fractures, or joint degeneration when load and recovery are poorly balanced.
