10 Ways to Improve Sports Performance with Physical Therapy
Improving an athlete’s sports performance with physical therapy can reduce the incidence of sports-related injuries by improving sports technique and body mechanics as well as enhancing the athlete’s strength, mobility, and power. Physical therapists can create a personalized sports conditioning and performance program to help athletes perform at an elite level. Check out 10 ways physical therapy can improve your sports performance!
Sports Performance & Physical Therapy
Improving an athlete’s sports performance with physical therapy can reduce the incidence of sports-related injuries by improving sports technique and body mechanics as well as enhancing the athlete’s strength, mobility, and power. Sports-related injuries continue to increase, exceeding 8 million incidents annually in the United States across all ages, sports, and competition levels.
Physical therapists can help prevent sports injuries through a targeted and personalized sports conditioning and performance program. First, the physical therapist conducts a comprehensive evaluation and functional movement assessment of the athlete to identify any biomechanical deficiencies, muscular imbalances, or postural alignment issues.
From there, the therapist designs a personalized program to build strength, improve flexibility, increase endurance, enhance balance and coordination, and provide body mechanic and injury prevention education through therapeutic exercise, targeted strengthening, dynamic balance and agility training, power training, manual therapy, endurance training, aquatic therapy, and posture and body mechanic training.
Research on young basketball players who participated in a physical therapy sports performance intervention (targeted plyometric and balance training exercises) found that performance measures like vertical jump height, power, and agility were significantly improved after physical therapy.
10 Ways Physical Therapy Can improve Sports Performance
Improve Range of Motion: Range of motion is one of the most important aspects of sports performance and functional ability. The physical therapist may use stretching exercises and soft tissue and joint mobilizations to increase joint mobility and reduce stiffness so that the athlete can move through a joint’s full range of motion. During sports, joints are pushed to the extreme of the tissues’ strength, where injury can occur. Therefore, during sports performance training, the therapist works with the athlete to push joints to their extreme safely to prepare joint tissues for the demands of sports performance without pain, resistance, or laxity in the joint.
Enhance Neuromuscular Control: Neuromuscular control refers to coordination of various body parts to work together to perform a movement. Neuromuscular control focuses on the movement of joints by muscles, tendons, and nerves, working to increase movement speed through targeted exercise coupled with progressively adding weight to the movement. The therapist works to ensure that muscles are properly engaged in the movement to improve the athlete’s functional movements.
Increase Flexibility: Increasing your flexibility is essential for functional mobility. Maintaining a high level of flexibility helps boost athletic performance, helps athletes become more agile, and gives athletes greater resilience to stressors. The physical therapist uses targeted stretching exercises to improve the flexibility of the athlete’s muscles, which helps athletes move more efficiently.
Improve Sport-specific Technique: Incorrect technique or sports form can reduce an athlete’s speed, strength, endurance, and power. Physical therapists are experts in biomechanics and kinesiology (the study of movement), which can help athletes improve form when performing certain movements and enhance the athlete’s control, coordination, and power. Small changes to improve positioning and sports technique can help athletes align their body correctly to load the correct tissues (bone, tendons, and muscles), unload tissues that should not be loaded during the position, conserve energy, and enhance movement efficiency.
Targeted Muscle Strengthening & Balance: Athletes train at a high level but can engage in repetitive training, which can overwork certain muscles and cause them to become the dominant muscle group. The physical therapist can identify such muscular imbalances, train muscle groups to balance the load on joints and tendons and create synergy in the muscle groups of the body to avoid injury, move more efficiently, and enhance athletic performance. To maximize muscular strength, athletes need to progressively load their muscles with heavier weights, increase their lifting sets, and reduce the repetitions per set over time.
Build Power & Speed: Each sport requires different combinations of power, strength, and speed. Power is defined as the ability to move weight over a distance in the shortest possible time, while speed is the ability to move the body as rapidly as possible. Physical therapists can design power and speed training drills to challenge the athlete to work as quickly as possible against resistance to build power and speed.
Improve Postural Alignment & Body Mechanics: Correct postural alignment, muscle balance, and body mechanics are critical for smooth, powerful movement. In order to move with the greatest powerful force, muscles must work together in a kinetic chain. If some muscles are weaker than others or misaligned, motion can be restricted, and you won’t be able to perform at your peak level of athleticism. A physical therapist can provide postural alignment and body mechanic instruction as well as dynamic balance training and targeted strengthening of muscles throughout the kinetic chain for specific sports movements.
Improve Joint Torque: A joint’s ability to bear a rotational load at high velocity is essential for high level sports performance. Generating and controlling the rotational force over joints and other body parts is an essential component of physical therapy-led sports performance training. The therapist may begin with manual therapy to mobilize joints and move on to a functional exercise progression, starting with single-plane movements and then progressing to multi-plane and multi-joint movements.
Enhance Mental Toughness: Developing mental toughness and resilience are important aspects of sports performance, allowing athletes to be better equipped to handle challenges and setbacks and perform under pressure on the competitive field. Physical therapy can help enhance mental toughness while training through mental focus and concentration techniques.
Sports Injury Prevention: Physical therapy can play a pivotal role in preparing athletes for their sports season and helping them maintain a high level of sports performance. Physical therapists can provide training on proper body mechanics and sport-specific techniques, teach athletes to load the correct tissue and unload the opposite tissue, build muscular strength and power, and enhance agility, speed, and range of motion for elite sports performance.
