Injury Prevention Workshop

On Friday the 28th October, our team from North Sydney Sports and Chiropractic (Andrew Lim, Cameron Hobbs and Joshua De Rooy) presented some of the latest research and techniques in injury prevention and tennis performance to a healthy crowd of over 60 NSTA juniors and their parents.

Those who attended heard from an ex-WTA player, Bryanne Crabb, how injuries affected her career and how out-of-date training techniques potentially led to an injury.  Her take-home message was preventative and proactive strategies are a necessity for tennis players these days.

We spoke about how the modern game of tennis has evolved over the past decade with the use of ‘poly’ strings, lighter racquets, slower court surfaces, longer matches all resulting in players needing to be much more physical and hardened than in years gone by.

We challenged some in attendance about common misconceptions regarding:

• Weight training in junior players
• Early specialization of tennis not necessarily leading to a successful transition into elite ranks
• Success in tennis is possible by playing less tennis and more of other sports and
• Being an athlete before a sportsperson.

Cameron, our Physiotherapist, spoke about the most common sites of injury in a tennis player. Shoulder injuries being the most common followed by hip and lower back injuries. Alarmingly, overuse injuries are becoming more common in younger players, injuries, such as stress fractures, once only seen in touring professionals are now common in adolescents.

Josh, our Exercise Physiologist, put on an on court demonstration of some mobility and stability exercises adopted by professional tennis players around the world. Just another aspect of tennis performance training often over looked.

Everyone in attendance was given a gift, an injury predictor test, used to assess how well a tennis player moves or potential risks for injury.  This tool is being used across many sports and by many sporting organisations as another way of preventing injuries and keeping players healthy during their sporting careers.

If you would like more information on the presentation or about our injury predictor test, please email info@sportsandchiro.com.au or call our office 9955-5110.