Injuries in football, how to prevent them and how to recover sooner – Corriere.it

LONDON Preparation, prevention and recovery. In the shadow of Westminster Abbey — where Charles and Camilla were crowned a few weeks ago — tendons, crusaders, adductors and flexors are on stage. What role does the brain play in ligament injuries? Why do very young people have a 30% chance of getting hurt again in the two years after ACL reconstruction? And why is there a higher incidence of accidents among women?

About 2,200 experts including doctors, orthopaedists, physiotherapists and researchers gathered at the Queen Elizabeth Center in London: if the champions hurt less today, it is mainly due to them. In general, in recent years there has been a 30% reduction in injuries “but more could be done”, explains Furio Danelon, sports doctor and medical director of the Milan branch Isokinetic center, giant of sports traumatology and rehabilitation who organized the London congress. In football – to which this edition of the conference is dedicated also because of the World Cup – “there are warm-up programs promoted by Fifa and designed to prevent injuries by working on muscle strength and flexibility”.

20 minutes before training would be enough, «and yet there isn’t the right compliance. Not everyone joins.” If today rehabilitation “is ambitious” and aims to bring the athlete back to the highest levels, every injury has a weight – burden, in jargon — quantifiable in terms of absence from activity and frequency. As a result, the emphasis is increasingly on prevention. Great importance is given, underlines Danelon, “to the athlete’s biomechanical evaluation”.

How does it move? How does it get out of a jump? Video analysis can indicate small corrections of great impact. “We are all capable of changing gestures.” Sports medicine does not concern only the champions: «The one on professionals is a research that sets an example, it reports what has been learned and experienced to everyone». As the pandemic has shown, physical activity has great “social and health” importance. «With Covid we have detected an increase in the incidence of spine pathologies due to a more sedentary life».

To feel good you have to move: the rule applies to everyone. According to theAmerican College of Sports MedicineThree short, intense sessions a week or “a half-hour a day of brisk walking or cycling,” according to Danelon, are enough to maintain cardiovascular health. Furthermore, stretching (“for flexibility, a few minutes a day”), the neuromotor aspect (“posture and balance exercises for movement control”) and strength (“weights according to age and physical condition, three times a week”). A daily commitment which, if respected, will give concrete results.