Concussions and Girls Soccer

I came across this great article the other day. It was about the prevalence of concussions in girls soccer – a lot to do with heading the ball. It reminded me of the importance of pre-habilitation training.

It’s a simple concept really, although relatively new. We all know that after injury, we go and get rehabilitation to help heal the injury. What if we took precautions to REDUCE the chance of injury? Prehabilitation training is designed to augment regular sport specific training while preparing the body functionally to reduce the chance of injury for that particular sport.

The neck is an over looked area of the body that we know is related to concussions and concussion symptoms. It’s an easy miss in a routine concussion check.  Often I have seen people who say they have concussion symptoms but they never hit their head. Sound familiar?  It’s because the force of the ‘hit’ (often from behind), creates the whiplash effect and the brain will forcefully move forward and back within the skull – hitting the skull in the process. There you have the concussion without the blow to the head.

This is why I ALWAYS address the neck during a routine Concussion Therapy session. In order to facilitate healing, you HAVE to get the blood flow going and reduce the tension. It’s the first step in my opinion!

Now, back to prehabilitation training. TRAIN THE NECK!  If you are in a sport that has any kind of impact, you MUST make sure the neck is strong. It’s not going to solve the issue of concussions in sport but it may just help to reduce your chances of injury. I found a great website dedicated to strengthening for the neck  http://necktraining.com/

 

And here is the link to the article: http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11604307-concussion-crisis-growing-in-girls-soccer?fb_ref=.T6qgcPncEiY.like&fb_source=timeline

 

This is just a quick post today!  I’ll be back with more soon!

 

Have a great day,

 

Jenna