Common injuries at Northwest

I talked to Kelly a trainer at northwest last week about some of the most common injuries that certain sports run into. She started of saying how certain sports go through different "phases." She noticed last year that the cross country team had a problem with IT bands while volleyball had ankle issues. These trends only last a year before going away. there is no known cause other then the training that the athletes go through is at the same time. There are common injuries that every sport is familiar with. For football most of the injuries are ankle and shoulder related. For volleyball its just the shoulder and sometimes the hip. Running is shin splints and IT bands. Soccer has ankle and quadricep issues. These sports have these same issues every year, of course along with a few other injuries.

Motivation

Demanding things can sometimes require motivation. There are so many things that can motivate different people, and each person is different from the next person. Each varying activity for each person can require different motivation. From the begging of time the male gender has been driven to impress the opposite sex, it is not to different today. Music is one of the greatest motivators, people today are surrounded by music. It can act as a way to relax and forget. Most joggers listen to music to keep themselves preoccupied when running for a long time. There are also many songs that can get people excited to do something. Either the beat or the lyrics have meaning to the listener. For some specific runners money is a great motivator. Professional runners are awarded money for placing in some large races. There is a form of motivation that is hard to find but exists within some great teams. Working for something greater then yourself can be a great motivator. Most teams don't realize this or are not good enough to have a team to work for. When teams find this and use it, it can work wonders in getting the team functioning the best it possibly can.   

10 commandments for staying injury free

1 dont become a slave to running
2 do not train on tired/dead legs
3 do not experiment with new shoes during a race
4 dont run through muscular or skeletal pain.
5 do not attempt to make up lost miles due to an injury
6 do not increase mileage more than 10% a year
7 do no do more than one hard workout on successive days
8 do not do more than one long run per week
9 do not get carried away by an exceptional race and immediately plunge into a higher level of training
10 dont be afraid to rest!

Different languages used within running (cont)

Men and women are different and like to be talked to differently. This will hold true in most situations and does in running. When I talked to Mrs. Koschel, she told me that when talking to men she needs to be more direct and tell them what they need to hear, even if it may upset them. Just this past Friday the track team had tryouts and the runners were running a timed 300 meter sprint. There was a man on the team that had strep throat the previous two days and was determined to run the time trials with the rest of the team. All coach had to say, a couple different times, was no. Koschel said that when talking to women she may need to be a bit softer on her approach.

            A huge difference in a coach’s language, that will be used every day, is the difference between talking to a group and talking to an individual. Like with any individual, a coach will want to talk to the other person on more of a personal level. There are endless types of personalities, so coaches need to find how to speak to different people. Getting an unmotivated athlete to do something can be difficult if you don’t know how to deal with their personality. Some people may require a small coaxing or motivation while others may need something like a stern talk or even yell. Yelling usually discourages people from wanting to do something, but some will find motivation in it. In high school my coach figured out how I needed to be talked to during workouts and races, and it helped me run, and feel, the best I could.  When talking to a group it helps to direct on what you expect from everybody. Koschel mentions how she needs to show that she has the authority and that she is in control of what happens during practice time.

         Another group that requires a bit of different communication happens once a year, tryouts. When dealing with new people on the team it is crucial to show how motivated a coach is. The more a coach demands respect at the start of the year, the more they will receive throughout the year. It goes along with motivation, if the first impression of a coach is that they are a pushover and don’t care to much about what is going on, the chances are that the runners will share their enthusiasm.

A coach only coaches during practice and sometimes in more casual settings. When it comes to race time there is nothing a coach can do but sit back and watch. “Run your own race” and “go out and get after it” are said a lot during competitions, mainly because the runner wants to run the way they know how to.  Telling a runner to change something right before a race is like adding a new play before a football game and expect it to run flawlessly. During the conference meet last year a girl made it into the finals for the 400 meter hurdles. She barely made it into the finals thus entering with the slowest time. Koschel saw that this might discourage the runner for her final race, but knew there was not much to say but get out there and beat one person! She did just that, she finished all conference and scored for Northwest.

Sometimes a student does something wrong and needs to be reprimanded. I missed a morning practice once and my coach told me I had to do something hard on the football field. When he was telling me what to do he was very unemotional and straight forward, which is exactly what Koschel said.

The opposite goes for motivation. When motivating a coach has to show their passion and dedication to the sport, it the coach isn’t motivated about the sport, why should the athlete. Even my high school coaches showed that they were dedicated to what they were doing. I had a coach miss one of my races in high school but he was still interested on how I felt and how the race went, even though he was the throwing coach. He gave me a lot of motivation throughout high school and made me want to perform.

Interview Koschel over languages.

From a runners standpoint there are a few different ways of communicating with other runners or people, when compared to a coach. From a runners view there are just as many options as most other athletes. Besides the casual talk with friends and the occasional interview, there is not a need to change one’s way of communicating. There is the example of cheering on a fellow athlete when they are running a race or a particularly hard work out, but that usually involves more yelling then actual communicating. Now from a coach’s standpoint there are many more things to be aware of.

            I was able to talk to the assistant track coach, Mrs. Tessa Koschel, here at Northwest, and find out the ways she communicates with different people throughout the year. One of the biggest differences in the way she communicates is between men and women. Others included things like someone’s personality, if the person is deserving punishment, someone needs motivation, different outcomes of races for different people, when the coach is recruiting, doing an interview, talking to a group vs. an individual, tryouts, pre-race, and during races. These are only a few of the different ways that coaches need to communicate almost on a daily basis.

Race tactics

The following are some great racing tactics that any competitive runner should know
1. Know the course. where are the hills? where is 600 meters from the finish? where are the dead spots?
2. Start, protect yourself. hold your line. position yourself for the first turn.
3. turns, maintain speed through correct angle of attack.
4. uphills, maintain rhythm and effort level
5.down hills, use them. if run correctly they will be faster and still be recovery
6. passing, with authority. if you are not going to run away, follow
7. finsih, mental. know where it is, be determined.
8. half way idea, be in the place you hope to be in at half way
9.maintain rhythm/tempo
10. the best tactics alow ywhat allow you to run your best race
11. a good race is not luck or happenstance.make good races, do not wait for them to happen.
12. make all decisions about what you will do and how you will handle situations well before the gun goes off.

bibliography #6

This was by far the most interesting article I found and found it to be extremely helpful and insightful. The authors were  L. Ristolainen, A. Heinonen, H. Turunen, H. Mannstrom, B. Waller, J.A. Kettunen and U.M. Kujala. Type of sport is related to injury profile: A study on cross country skiers, swimmers, long-distance runners and soccer players. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 20.3 (June 2010): p384(10). This takes a wide range of sports and around 150 people from every sport and finds the most common injuries between all of them. Most of the sports had recurring foot injuries while swimming and skiing had shoulder issues. This focused mainly on the overuse of a muscle and the subject was taken out of the study if the injury was structural, cause by fast unexpected movement that injures the muscle, ligament or tendon. This is a great general article about sports and their most common injuries. This is aimed at anyone who wants to know what sports undergo what kinds of injuries. This is unique in the fact that it tells what injuries athletes need to be cautious of. This is a huge part of my theories about injuries, sports and how they are related.