Question:  Why are we seeing so many injuries in the NHL this year?

Answer: Most professional sports organizations are good at rehabilitating an injured player, but are lacking when it comes to injury prevention.  Simply including mandatory flexibility and joint stability tests on a monthly basis would be the first step to reducing injuries.  Group stretches and exercises are not effective at taking into consideration the unique imbalances of each athlete.  Rather than adopting a proactive approach to preventing injuries, most sports teams follow the common reactive model that dominates our medical environment.

The most common areas of injury for hockey players are the groin, knee, shoulder and lower back.  To prevent injuries, players need to put an increased focus on muscle balance and flexibility. Further, elite athletes need individualized workouts that take their body type and athletic goals into consideration.  A player who is small and quick needs a different workout from a player who is big and strong. Goalies, defenseman and forwards need to do exercises specific to their position and body-type.  Working out hard and being strong and fast is not enough.

Most hockey players work on their core muscles all year to prevent groin injuries. Stability balls, Bosu® balls, balance boards and medicine balls are more popular than ever. Yet, we are seeing more and more groin injuries. The problem with most of these exercises is that they isolate the upper and side abdominal muscles

but are not that effective at isolating the lower abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. All athletes should be performing pelvic thrusts for their low abs, as this exercise is the foundation for targeting that area. However, such a basic exercise can seem too easy and monotonous and often gets left out of a program. This is when an imbalance starts to occur and an injury may follow. The athlete is then quickly entered into rehabilitation and starts with the basic exercises that could have prevented the injury in the first place.

The key with preventing groin injuries and many other soft-tissue injuries is to keep the small muscles responsible for stabilizing a joint strong and ensuring that each joint is balanced and operating in a full and pain free range of motion.  It is essential to maintain proper body mechanics at each joint.  As soon as the joint loses stability is becomes susceptible to wear and tear and injury. This is the philosophy of “Prehabilitation”.

The goal of prehabilitation is to monitor and maintain joint stability to prevent injuries.  It takes an athlete between 15-20 minutes a day to perform a prehabilitation routine.  I am confident that sports teams are catching on and headed in this direction.  It will be great to see teams adopt this cutting edge pro-active approach, and perhaps one day the rest of the medical community will follow.

Shaun Karp is a certified personal trainer.  For further information call his office at 604-420-7800 or go to www.karpfitness.com.