Dealing With Injuries (And Preventing Them)

Foreign. Welcome to the Vision, your master training podcast. Thank you guys for listening. Tuning in, Apple Podcast and Spotify, shout out to you guys. I do in fact post my podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So if you're on YouTube right now listening and. Or watching, I should say, and you want to go listen, then go ahead and look me up. Podcast, Spotify. You're gonna find it on both those platforms. And probably, if you listen to podcast anywhere else, you'll probably find it there too. So go ahead and check it out there. And of course, everybody who's watching on YouTube right now, shout out to you guys for tuning in. Like I said, guys, if you drop a review on Apple Podcasts and you know, you leave your thoughts or whatever, I'll read it on the show. So if you guys have not left a review yet, you want me to read what you have to write, then go ahead and do that. It takes you five seconds. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page on Apple, on Apple Podcasts or my podcast, leave a review, let me know what you think. And today we have another review to leave. So shout out to you guys. This comes From Moon G. Jr. He says, I made so much progress listening to your podcast. God bless. Appreciate that. And again, guys, like, you know, reviews are so important. And so again, like, thank you, Moon G. Jr. For the, for the support for all of you guys who are even, you know, consistently listening or you share the podcast with somebody ever. You know, you, you leave a like or you subscribe or you drop a comment. All that stuff helps. And so I'm very, very appreciative of you guys for that. So we'll hop into today. This is a topic that I've gotten requested a ton, A ton. Probably of the, like, the topics that I have kind of in the works. This one is probably the one that at this point has gotten the most requests. And it's talking about dealing with injuries. And so this is obviously a very big part of, of really any sport, there's always going to be injuries to deal with. And so it's important that we, you know, you know, how to deal with injuries when they happen. And you know, just as importantly, how you can prevent injuries more that, you know, there's a. Some people would say, and I've actually seen this before, but with like, trainers who actually like try and claim that you can prevent all injuries and that every injury that happens is the fault of like some sort of, oh, you know, this, there's a strength imbalance or there's A muscle, whatever like there, that, that's true in a lot of cases. Like a lot of times injuries happen because, you know, you're predisposed to it in a certain way because of a muscle imbalance or because of some other issue that you might have had that might have led to a compensation with some other joint, some other muscle like that is very, very true. But also there's times where injuries just happen. But what it's about is about making sure that the likelihood of that happening is as low as possible. Okay. And typically it goes hand in hand with an elevated level of performance. Typically when you elevate your performance because of the off court training that you're doing and you know, or I should say typically when you are doing training that is, that helps you prevent, you know, injuries, typically that's going to lead to an increase in performance as well because it's going to lead to an increase in joint health which is ultimately going to lead to you being able to perform your movements more efficiently and be better when you're on the court. So not only is talking injury prevention an important part of staying on the court, but it's also an important part of actually performing at your best when it comes to you playing. So you know, there are, there are some studies that have been done, not a ton of them and especially when it comes to like, you know, very, very, you know, well, controlled studies but of the information available and of what I was reading in terms of the, the, the different, the different like articles different like, different like scholarly articles that were written on this. Basketball is the most frequent cause of sports related emergency department visits for youth and adolescents. So of all the sports out there, basketball leads to the most trips to the emergency room for at least for you know, for like high school age players. And the, so that's kind of giving out partially. That's because basketball is probably, at least in America, probably the most popular youth sport in terms of the amount of kids who play and also because you have both boys and girls who play it. So you just have way more, the way, there's just way more people playing. But I don't know if the number is that much higher than what you know, soccer is. Right. But again the, the just when it comes to the high requirement when it comes to athleticism and a lot of times players being very underprepared for the demands of the sport, that's kind of a perfect storm for injuries happening. So the, that's, that's something to keep in mind other things to note about Basketball injuries that the risk of being injured in a game is, is greater than practice. And there's, there can be reasons why when it comes to. Oh, you know, it's. I think ultimately what comes down to is like, you know, it's an unregulated environment. Typically. Practice is much more regulated, much more black and white. The intensity is not as high. There's not a crowd, there's no refs, there's no, you know, you're not really being coached like you would be in a game typically. So the, the overall intensity of what's happening is not going to be as high. And you know, you should know this, like, practice and games are different in, in practice, you know, if you're, let's say you're a varsity player, a lot of times you might be playing against JV guys, right? You might have the JV players who are run scout team for you that day. Okay? So your intensity naturally won't be as high because it doesn't have to be. And that's just kind of how it is. So that, that's, you know, something to consider when we talk about that. Now the other thing that's interesting is that girls are more likely to be injured than boys, especially when it comes to knee and ankle injuries, and those injuries are more likely to be severe. Now, the reason for that is just anatomical differences, really. And a lot of it has to do with just how, just like, like the anatomical design of the hips. When you compare male and female athletes, that's kind of, you know, neither here nor there. But I thought that it's a kind of an interesting thing because that also kind of lets you know there's different ways you can kind of approach it when it comes to, you know, male athletes, female athletes. I think that's an interesting dichotomy. I'm not going to go too deep into like, specifics of all this stuff, but I'll give you guys kind of an overarching look at it and then we'll get more into like, the applicable stuff as well. So for me, personally, you know, I haven't. I've never had any sort of like major injuries, but I definitely had a couple. Like, back when I was, I think I was a freshman in high school, I had. This wasn't really an injury at the time I thought it was, but I ended up missing half of my half of the season because of. I had like, really bad knee pain on the side. Ended up being like, like some like, growth pain, which I'm sure probably a lot of you guys, especially if you grow. If you've grown a lot recently, then you'll probably. You might. You might feel that a little bit. And then that kind of just went away as time went on after a few months of that. But that was. That was kind of the first thing where, you know, I started to really think about, like, the importance of foam rolling, the importance of strengthening, you know, your, Your glutes, strengthening your hips, strengthening, you know, your hamstrings and all the kind of muscles that are surrounding those joints. Because it's not just when you have knee pain. It's not just about your knee. Like, usually it's not your knee that's causing that knee pain. Typically something at the hip that's causing it or something the ankle that's causing. Okay. And that kind of got me thinking along those lines. The next year, my sophomore year of high school, I got my worst injury ever, which was a. It was a sprained ankle, but it was. It was a very, very severe one. And it's the thing with sprained ankles, too. And spraying. Sprained ankles are by far the most common injury in basketball. They're. They're. It's not close like that. That is the most common injury in basketball. And the thing with sprained ankles is that if it's sprained badly enough, never really fully heals because your ligaments and your ankle, they get stretched out so much that they don't, like, they don't just, you know, after a couple months, go back to their normal, you know, their normal length. They stay stretched out. So that's why it's so easy to re. To re. Aggravate an ankle after you've already sprained it. And why it's so important that you continue to. Whether, you know, you wear a brace or you tape it up, but, but also it's important that you continue to do exercises to strengthen those ligaments to prevent that injury from potentially happening again. And so ankle injuries are very, very unique in that perspective. And I think the one thing that's really important is that you want to. When you first have that ankle injury and you're finally able. For me personally, mine was really. I was on crutches for a week and a half. I couldn't put any weight on it. And so by the time that I was off crutches and I was able to walk, that was when I had to start doing some rehab for it because you don't want the scar tissue build up. You want to kind of break it up, get your ankle moving A little bit again. But even to this day, that would have been almost five years ago, and I still, like, I'll still every once in a while, like, roll my ankle randomly and like, it'll hurt real bad for, like, the next two weeks. Like, I won't be able to flex it, the. The. The, you know, as. As much as I normally can. And it's just like, my left ankle is cool, completely fine. My right ankle, though, I roll it over a little bit and it's like, boom. Just pain is back again. And so that's kind of how it is with ankle injuries. You kind of have to. To. It's. It's a. It's a constant state of, like, rehabbing it, basically. So I'll probably drop a video at some point to just going through like, some ankle strengthening stuff, because I think that's really important when it comes to ankle health. And so. But for me, that was the worst injury I've had. I'm sure a lot of you guys also had that before, but when it comes to injuries in general, guys, prevention is the best solution. Okay? Now, obviously, if you have an injury, this is kind of a moot point, but the best thing you can do is not be in a position to get injured in the first place. Now, for me, when. When I got injured, it was literally kind of an unlucky thing I was wearing. Now, I know there's. I think there's been studies, and I actually haven't looked at this, so I'm not completely sure when it comes to, like, high top shoes versus low top shoes. Because when I got my ankle injury, I was wearing a pair of Kobe 9 lows. And so what happened is that I was at an AAU tournament and they built one of those. Anybody's ever been to Pitt Jam Festival, okay, In Pittsburgh, and you played in the. The Convention center. And they put up those. Those, like, sport courts, but it's like, portable, so it's like raised up off the ground. Like you. If you walk into the. Into the Convention center and then you walk onto the court, the court's like probably half an inch or an inch up off the ground from the actual floor. And so that was what happened to me, is I was on a third fast break and I went up for a layup and I got. I don't remember I got fouled or not, but I ended up going like, out of bounds. And because the court was an inch higher than the ground, I didn't properly brace my foot for that. So I had braced it as If I was going to land on that court, but actually landed on the, on the ground. So that drop made my ankle just turn a little bit more before it landed, and then, boom, all my weight goes down on my right ankle. It was, it was bad. And part of that was just unlucky. Like, you're just, you know, you're playing on a court like that and you just, you kind of just land wrong on it. And so that certainly is the case at times, but other times, like, you know, if you just, there's ways where, you know, even if that happens to you, if you've done the work beforehand to make sure that your ankles are, you know, properly strengthened, that they're able to, you know, the injury won't be as bad. So that's why it's super important after that that you rehab it, you strengthen it, do all this stuff. Because then inevitably when you step on somebody's foot or whatever, like the, any sort of re. Injury is not as bad because your ankle has, you put in the work really with it. So that's why I say prevention is the best solution. So even if they did something like that, where you, you rolled an ankle or whatever, whatever, like whatever might have happened to you, you want to make sure that, that those, the, the exercise you're given by, you know, whether it's your, your team trainer, your athletic trainer, your physical therapist, your doctor, whoever it is, like whatever they give you to do, you have to make sure that you take that and you, you commit to doing it, because that's the most important part. It's not just about resting, guys. Typically with most injuries, you know, unless it's like a, you know, like a, like a fracture or something where, like, you just have to let it kind of heal even after that, like, you have to make sure that you get that strength back. You, you get that, that, that joint or that whatever it is, like back to being able to move and handle heavy loads, handle the stresses of being an athlete, being a basketball player specifically, okay, so that's, that's, that's the biggest thing is how can we prevent injuries? And that comes through making sure that you strengthen. I think another big part is making sure that your warmup is good. Okay? Making sure that you're warming up before you play, before you work out. And that's going to be a big thing. One thing I'd love to do is like, I'll go, I'll do line hops with just my right foot. So just to get those ligaments of my ankles kind of firing and geared up to go. I'll just do some simple line hops, just like hopping over the baseline, just back and forth, just low hops, quick, okay. Getting used to having my ankle have to handle my weight, but also be able to push off the ground, land, push off the ground, and then just get into that habit, building those moving patterns. Okay. The other thing that I was reading a lot about lately is isometrics and how isometrics play a really big role in being able to prevent injuries in terms of like your tendon strength. Okay? So an isometric is if you think about like, like basically it's getting into a some sort of movement and then you hold that position. So think about like a squat, right? You're like on your way down either going down into a squat. That's the centric phase, okay. Going back up is the concentric phase. But that point at the bottom of the squat, if you like, where you pause a little bit between going down and then going back up, that's the isometric part right at the bottom, right there. If you think of a plank, right? A plank is an isometric exercise. You're just holding that one position, okay. If you do a bicep curl, right? And you know, again, your way up is that, that, you know, that concentrate, then you hold at the top. That's the isometric part, right? So really, with every exercise that you do, there's some sort of isometric aspect to it. If you think about just going into a lunge and then just holding that lunge for 30 seconds, that's an isometric exercise. Okay. And there's been a lot of studies that have been done on the importance of, of and the efficiency when it comes to building, like, tendon health. When it comes to your movements with isometric exercises. If you think of wall sits as well, it's another isometric example. There's a study that I read from St. Petersburg in Russia, and they basically looked at the use of isometric exercises in the system to prepare somebody or an athlete for basketball and the stresses that are involved with that. So what they found is that the use of isometrics with basketball players helps to prevent injury. And the term they use to describe it is a high efficiency of isometric exercises, Basically saying that the use of isometrics is very, very helpful in preventing injury in the players that they used it with. And they use the study with a couple different teams, Russia, one team specifically, that was like really, really struggling with injuries. And then after that kind of that three month stint of using isometric exercises, the, the rate of injuries are going down, the players overall well being was going up. And a lot of times the tendon pain, when it comes to, like knee pain and all that stuff that the players had, like, for a lot of them was completely gone. I think they said 98% of the players fell significantly better after going through those isometrics for that period of time. So the analysis, the kind of the conclusion of this study, show that doing isometric exercises indicates that the level of their physical fitness is higher. And the longer the period of continuous isometric exercises is, the higher the physical fitness level is, the lower the injury rate and fatigue are, and consequently the greater the improvement of performances. So like I said, guys and injury prevention, it's not just about injury prevention. It is, but also that translates to better performance as well. And they found that after that continuous period of isometric exercises, not only were, you know, did the injury start to go down, did tendon pain start to go down, but performance was increased because of those two things. Okay, so when it comes to specific isometrics, I'm still researching this a lot, so I don't have anything like specific to give you guys yet. Shout out to PJF performance. I know he does a lot of stuff with this, and I've watched some of his stuff too, and I actually had one of his programs too, so I've seen it. He does a lot of stuff with this. But in general, when you talk about isometrics, a great one is just holding a split squat, right? So putting your foot up on a chair or on a couch or whatever, going into a lunge position, and then just holding the bottom of that lunge position, right? Or I guess the top of that lunge position, okay? Just holding it for 30 seconds, right? Then you switch your feet, okay? So you're able to hold that isometric contraction and then you raise up. And one of the best things about this is that especially if you have tendon pain like you have knee pain already, a lot of times doing, like regular squats or doing jumps obviously is going to exacerbate that pain and make it worse. But doing isometrics doesn't put that same stress on those tendons that doing those more dynamic exercises would. But yet you're still going to get the benefits of the strengthening of the muscle. And there's. There's been studies that have shown that after doing even one isometric, like set the, the. The. The amount of pain that is felt by that joint significantly lowers for the next 45 minutes. So you do one of those, one of those split squat holds, and then all of a sudden, for the next 45 minutes, typically your tendon pain is going to be lower than it was. So it's always something interesting to think about. And I'll bring you guys something more as soon as I have a more concrete plan put together with that. But being proactive guys in your rehabbing and prehabbing is what they call it when you're doing stuff to prevent injuries is super, super important when it comes to dealing with injuries that have happened, but also preventing them moving forward. For, you know, you guys who are dealing with injuries and, you know, you have a timetable where it's like, you know, maybe I hurt my, my, my arm or I hurt my ankle or whatever, and I can't do anything for six weeks, right? Well, then it becomes. I'll get this question all the time where it's like, hey, you know, I just, I can't, like, do you have any exercise that I can do when I. Well, I can't, like, I can't do this or I can't do that, or I hurt my foot or I hurt my. Whatever. Like, at that point, it just becomes doing what you can do. So if you're able to go out and shoot form shots, then do that. If you're able to do some stationary ball handling, then do that. Okay? If you're not able to do anything, then just watch some basketball, okay? Read some books. Read Toughness by Jay Billis. Okay, Read, read Training Camp by John Gordon. Like, there's a lot of stuff that you can still do. While you might not be able to do everything, that's. That's one of the things that. One of the quotes that I love is don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can do. So I'm sure that if you sit, like, if you think about it, there are things you can do even if you're dealing with an injury, you know, even if you have a foot injury, maybe you're still able to go do some form shooting and maybe, you know, you can't go to a basket, maybe you just do it, you know, straight up in the air at your house, okay, There's. There's certainly still stuff that you can do. And, you know, maybe if you have a, an injury, you know, your left hand is hurt maybe to the time to just work on, you know, finishing with your right hand, maybe you still can do your form shooting, your ball handling, maybe your right hand's hurt. So you take the time to get really good with your left hand. Like there's, there's stuff that you can do. You just have to be creative. Obviously, again, make sure that you don't go overboard with it. And you're still ultimately trying to make sure that you don't put yourself in a position to make your injury worse. But if you're able to, you know, do something, then do it. And that ultimately comes down to specifically like what the injury is. So I can't give you guys like, oh, yeah, you know, your injury, just do this workout. Well, I don't, I, I'm not your doctor, so I can't really tell you that. But something you have to find for yourself. Okay? There's, I'm sure that there's still something that you can do. So don't let that stop you. Don't let injury stop you and say, oh, I can't do anything now. Well, there's probably still something you can do if you have an injured hand. Well, maybe you can't do any upper body strength stuff, but maybe you can still work on, you know, your lower body. Maybe you can still do your squats and your, your, your lunges and, you know, your jumps. Whatever else you might do with your lower body, maybe you're still able to do that with your hand injury. I mean, maybe, you know, if you have a, an ankle injury, you can't do your lower body stuff, maybe you can still do some purpose upper body stuff. So something to think about as well when it comes to dealing with like a super serious injury, like a season ending one. That's, you know, I've never dealt with that. I know a lot of teammates and players who have dealt with stuff like that and for sure, like, I guess the one thing and the outlook that I guess you can have with it, obviously it's, it's, there's nothing good about it. Right? There's, it's, it's one of the, one of the unfortunate realities sometimes with sports is that sometimes things just don't go right. And, But I guess one thing that you can take from that is that a lot of times that can help you to become a better player long term. Okay. Because a lot of times it means that now you have to be able to. First of all, you got to rehab that injury. So you have to learn, okay, what exercises do I do that are gonna strengthen these joints or these muscles or this muscle group or what's gonna help me become more stable in my lower body or you Know, what do I need to do to make sure that, you know, my muscles are warmed up and activated before exercise? So you have to take a more cognizant approach to youryour body in general. So that kinda gives you a different outlook. So now when you come back again, we talked about, guys, how injury prevention is not just about injury prevention, but also it helps you to perform better. So if you have to go through all this, all this rehab and all this stuff, well, maybe if you really are proactive with that, not only do you become, you know, more, more, more bulletproof against injuries, but your performance is now better because you strengthen those muscle groups maybe to a point that they weren't at before. So maybe you can come back and be a better athlete. Okay, that's one thing to think about, but also having to go through that, you know, the, the just the long months of, you know, rehab and recovery and all that sort of stuff, well that's, that's a discipline that's built up where you have to stay committed to a goal long term. And now when you come back and you're back to being an athlete, well, that same discipline can be a lot of times translated to you, your sport, now to basketball, right? So now the way that you had to approach your rehab is the way that you approach your workouts, the way that you approach your pregame, whether you approach your watching film, okay. And so that might just elevate you from straight up a mental perspective. So all of a sudden there's an, potentially another thing that you can gain from that. Okay. And again, you know, the, it's not to say that it doesn't suck, right, that it's not really hard, but there's that light at the end of the tunnel for you to look at as well. That's kind of, again, my kind of outside looking in outlook on that. I think it's important to take what you can from that. Okay, so hopefully this helps you guys out and answer some of you guys question when it comes to dealing with injuries, injury prevention, again, when it comes to the isometric stuff, the, the go, go check out PJF performance. He does some stuff with this and I think it's really, really good. I'm gonna continue to look into this and I'll put some stuff out for you guys at some point. Again, when I have a more concrete sort of, sort of idea put together with all of it. Like I said before, guys, if you are listening Apple podcasts or if you're not, you have an iPhone, then go ahead, open podcast and drop a review down below. Let me know what you think about the show and I'll read it for you on here. You guys will get a chance to be to be featured because again I really appreciate everyone who leaves reviews for me. Helps the show to grow more people to see it which is just better for everybody. But you guys who are on YouTube right now, drop a like and subscribe if you're a new new podcast coming out every week. As I say guys, the My Instagram Vision Driven basketball if you have any questions for me, send me a dm. A lot of the topics that I do for the podcast and for videos too come from you know, dms I get or sometimes I'll put out like question polls, ask what you guys want to see and a lot of times that's where my ideas come from. So again, you have questions for me, send me a dm. Just drop a follow anyway and I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.