For a number of years I have been working with Bedford Thunder basketball team. So I thought I would do a blog on some of the most common basketball injuries and a few tips to reduce likelihood of suffering with one.
The three most common areas of the body to pick up an injury within basketball is unsurprisingly knees, ankles and fingers.
Basketball being a sport played with the hands means there are fingers being extended to catch the ball, block and opponent and many other reasons. All of which carry a risk of there being a slight misjudge in timing or just bad luck where the ball could easily crash into the tips of a finger or fingers, potentially causing all sorts of issues, from jammed fingers, wrist issues, or even a broken finger. None of which are particularly appealing.
Knees and ankles are another common area for injury, the number of times during a game a player will have to jump, change direction, absorb impact whilst landing places a very high load on both ankles and knees.
Ankles can easily pick up a sprain even with the best footwear on the market offering ankle support if you jump up, get jostled in the air or land awkwardly then the chances of ankle injury is quite high.
The same goes for knees, the changes in direction and constant running/jumping can expose players to injury risk.
So, what can you do to protect your self from injury?
The best way to bulletproof your body is to ensure you are doing adequate strength and conditioning (S&C) as well as mobility work. Strong, mobile healthy tissues will be far better able to absorb the load placed upon them. A solid S&C programme should include exercises like depth jumps, box jumps, explosive Olympic lifts and lots of change of direction drills. This will cause tendons to become stiffer, your body stronger resulting in a lower likelihood of injury as well as an improvement in on court performance. And who doesn’t want to get better?
If you would like some help with an injury recovery, some S&C help or to talk anything related to this blog then please get in touch.
