After having performed thousands of sports physicals over the years, I have seen an ever increasing trend in poor posture. Often, the posture is altered before a sport is undertaken, and frequently the posture is affected by repetitive motions of a particular sport.

You can simply perform an assessment of your own posture by having another person observe you from behind you (six feet directly behind you). Does one shoulder look higher than the other? Does one hip look higher? Check to see if your feet are straight, is one flaring out more than the other? The knees should be in alignment as well, facing the same direction. Your head should be equally balanced, not leaning to one side. If some differences are noticed, you may have a biomechanical problem that is inhibiting your sports performance.

I like to use the analogy of your car being out of alignment. If your car is misaligned, your tires will wear out unevenly, you will not get optimum fuel efficiency in your car, and it will not run like it should. The same principle applies to the human body. Do you believe that your body would be more or less susceptible to injury if you were a runner and you had one hip higher than the other, which caused one leg to be an inch shorter? Running day-after-day, mile-after-mile?

The body will respond to the misalignment with its innate ability to compensate for its differences and will adapt to the change. However, there is an insidious process, disease starts, and so the person will not have symptoms for many years before they experience other health issues. One of the most common conditions that occur is degenerate joint disease of the spine and pelvis. The fact of the matter is, if your biomechanics were in proper working order, you would be a better, more efficient runner.

One of the most common comments I hear when a new patient visits the office is “I can golf fine if I take two anti inflammatories or pain pills before I golf, but after I’m done I have a lot of pain”. Do you see the point that I am trying to make? If our bodies are giving us pain or it has restricted our range of motion in some way, it is trying to tell us that something is wrong. Like your car oil light coming on to warn you that the oil is low, do you turn the light off?

We often treat our automobiles better than our bodies. We can thank the pharmaceutical companies and medical profession for constant bombardment in radio, print, and television advertisements. Billions of dollars are spent yearly to convince you to take that little miracle pill or potion for fast relief. They advise us to get rid of that symptom quick, ignore what the cause is. We need to take responsibility for our own health. Listen to your body; no one knows it better than yourself.

A pre-exercise warm up is imperative, but often disregarded. Most people want to “get right into their workout” and therefore begin their exercise regime before their muscles and ligaments have warmed up sufficiently. Without this precaution, one pre-exposes themselves to abnormal strain on their ligaments and muscular system.

It is even more urgent that we take a serious look at this with the looming changes in our Healthcare System. The quality will not be as good. We should open our eyes, and look to the future. Say to yourself, what if 10, 20 or 30 years from now I have (fill in the blank). What could I have done to prevent that, should I have done this or that? The time for action is now!

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There are several things that you need to be well aware of when you chose to play tennis. Our bodies are susceptible to so many different potential injuries that may happen during the course of playing tennis, that it is very important to be careful about how you play so that you can avoid as many injuries as possible. Yet even the most careful player will likely have an injury at some point in time. Learning to avoid most injuries and also learning which are the most common ones will give you the advantage in a fast treatment, which will ultimately lead to a quicker healing process.

Tennis Elbow tends to be a very common injury among tennis player. This is an injury that occurs to the upper arm on the inside close to the elbow itself. This tends to create problems with the way that you use your arm overall and if you are not careful you can badly injure your arm even further. The best method to prevent Tennis Elbow is to get some rest as well as ensure that you are stretching thoroughly both before and after any time that you play. Even if you decided to play for a short period of time, it is always a good practice to have a good stretch.

Another form of common tennis injury is Tendinitis. There are several different types that tend to strike at tennis players and they include Shoulder Tendinitis, Rotator Cuff Tendinitis, Achilles Tendinitis and even Wrist Tendinitis. So what is Tendinitis? Tendinitis itself is defined as inflammation of the tendons. This means that for each area where Tendinitis can occur for a tennis player that the tendons have become inflamed, irritated or even swollen. The exact amount of time it takes for Tendinitis to heal generally varies greatly but it can be anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks.

Osteoarthritis that occurs in the knee would be considered another common form of injury. This resulted over years of huge amount of impact on the knees and so it is very important to ensure that you have a strong pair of knees and the type of shoes that you are wearing should be also designed for this high impact activities. If you wear shoes without proper cushioning and do not take good care of your knees then you are at a much higher risk for osteoarthritis.

Another important thing that you need to always keep in mind is that most tennis injuries are either acute or cumulative. This means that either they occur over time due to the body parts being over used or they occur suddenly due to trauma. Regardless of the exact type of injury, you should take the necessary precautions and these includes wearing the appropriate sports wear and protection guards like a pair of good tennis shoes, elbow guards and wrist guards etc. These will enable you to avoid as many injuries as possible.

It is also a wise idea to look into finding a good sports medicine doctor that you can work with in the event that you get an acute injury such as a Torn Rotator Cuff, Shoulder Dislocation or even an Achilles Tendon Rupture. Taking proper care of injuries quickly is very important, so knowing exactly who you will be seeing if an injury occurs is an essential step and this will help you to stay as safe and healthy as possible and continue to enjoy this beautiful game.

Want to find out more about tennis basic strokes? Visit my Blog at Learn Tennis Basic for more details.