Ultimate Frisbee season is in full swing now! For those of you that play at a more competitive and elite level, you have most likely been playing consistently hard, and especially if you are planning on going to compete at The 2014 World Championships this August in Lecco, Italy!

The answer is in knowing how to train, prepare for games and recovery!

World Championships 2010

Rotator Cuff muscle attachemnts

 

 

I also worked with another Ultimate Frisbee player that took just a couple of weeks to prepare for World Championships in Japan in 2012. He told me that he was experiencing some minor back pain throughout the summer with his job and never saw any Physiotherapy for it. After a long flight to Osaka, Japan he stepped off the plane with a sore back. After his first game he ended up herniating his lumbar L5 disc and couldn’t even walk for the rest of the week.

Being Proactive

Preparing then means to listen to your body and actually responding proactively to what it is saying to you. It means training to play. Doing an Ultimate Frisbee specific conditioning program can not only help you play stronger, layout harder, but help you last the season or make it to Worlds so that you can play your best injury free. Preparing also means doing adequate warming up and doing dynamic stretching before playing and then warming down and static stretches after you play. The most common type of injuries occurring in Ultimate is muscular strain injuries (over 76% – hamstrings, quadriceps, calves), followed then by ankle, knee, shoulder, head and rib injuries.

Core Strength

Core strengthening

If you have a strong inner core, you can prevent your hamstrings or groin muscles from being so overworked, which can lead to muscular strain. A hypermobile or unstable sacro-iliac joint (SI joint) can contribute to this. Wearing core shorts can also assist in helping you make it through the season or Worlds, but ultimately you want to strengthen your inner core correctly and ensure that your outer core functions in coordination with your strength and power and agility.

Recovery

Recovery means many things. It means getting enough sleep, eating a balanced diet and getting enough protein and carbs, and that you warm down and stretch after every practice or game (stretching where you actually feel it instead of just running through the motions). The warm down phase allows you to check in with your body to see if there are any new aches & pains that you have after playing. Sometimes during a game and in the heat of the moment where you make a hard bid and layout for the disc, adrenalin is coursing through your body and you do not necessarily feel the pain. This is where you want to check in with your body.

What to Look For

If you have any new aches and pains, you can follow the “S.H.A.R.P.” rule and then apply the “R.I.C.E.” principle.

 

S: Swelling – Does the joint look puffy or muscle swollen more than usual after playing? Swelling can cause peripheral damage to healthy tissue surrounding the area that is affected due to the physiological / chemical response to an injury. It can also cause muscle inhibition of the muscles around the joint, which can then lead to compensated movement patterns. Limping, whether obvious or not, can cause detrimental altered movement patterns where muscles no longer work together and imbalances begin to occur.

H: Heat – Does the joint or muscle feel more warm / hot than usual?

A: Altered Function– Does it move differently than normal after playing?

R: Redness – Is there any unusual increased in redness than normal?

P: Pain – Is it more painful than normal?

If any of the following apply to you then you want to follow the “R.I.C.E.” principle.

R: Rest – This means trying no stress to the injury over the next 24-48 hours.

I: Ice – Apply a cold pack or ice with a damp cold hand towel on the area for 15 minutes and repeat it every hour for the first 24-48 hours if the swelling is particularly bad.

C: Compression – Wrap and compress the area to help control the swelling for the first 24 to 72 hours. Use a tensor bandage to wrap a cold pack or ice on the affected area.

E: Elevated–Having the affected area at or above the heart allows the swelling to drain better.

If you notice that after 72 hours that the unusual aches and pains are still there and especially if you catch saying to yourself, “I’m just going to play through it…” then it would be a really good idea to go get it checked out if you want to address the problem proactively and return to playing your best.

 

By getting at the root cause of your problem, we can help you connect with how you really want to move again!

World Games 2013 – Cali Columbia

 

 

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Wil Seto, Registered Physiotherapist Send Email

InSync Physiotherapy is a multi-award winning health clinic helping you in Sports Injuries, Physiotherapy, Exercise Rehabilitation, Massage Therapy, Acupuncture & IMS.

Upon further evaluation, they all had restricted mobility in their neck and entire spine and a couple of them at one point in the past have had bad whiplash, or some degree of it where they couldn’t even move their necks for a few days. 

On assessment, the spinal segments of specific spinal vertebral joints were locked and some of the major muscles that attach from the neck to the shoulder were either in a hyper-toned state or were in spasm and had shortened considerably. Overall, the biomechanics and the range of motion in the neck and shoulder were not even close to optimal and the whole upper quadrant, arm strength and mobility were deficient.

Primary approach to treatment

The approach to these types of injuries involves treating the body as a whole in how the fingers / hands work together with the shoulder, neck and the rest of the spine. A stiff and weak neck  will ultimately cause posture compensations when climbing; which will then lead to an abnormal increase in use of power through the shoulders and also the forearms and fingers.

Any slight tweaks in the shoulder like temporary rotator cuff impingement can lead to increased scar tissue in the shoulder capsule and then altered mechanics in movement. 

With altered mechanics in the shoulder, the forearm then will need to be utilized more and more power is applied through the finger tendons which lead to various issues of tendinopathies, tenosynovitis, ligament sprains and annular pulley strains / tears (annular pulley tears can sideline you from climbing from several weeks to quite possibly several months to a year depending on the severity of the tear).

Treatment

Muscles of the neck. Lateral view.

Neck and Shoulder

With Manual therapy, we can ‘unlock’ the spinal segments of the neck facet joints utilizing gentle mobilization techniques to restore its mobility. Gentle stretching and mobility exercises can then be use to safely increase the flexibility of the muscles and soft tissue and to reinforce the gains in joint mobility. Specific core strengthening exercises can then be used to progress static and dynamic strength.

Scar tissue also usually builds up in either the front or back capsule of the shoulder from the impingement syndrome. 

Using gentle joint mobilization and soft tissue techniques, we can free up the shoulder to restore a more optimal range of motion. 

Forearm

The forearm muscles also need to be released because the tightness actually puts a prolonged strain on the finger tendons thus not allowing them to fully recover from your repeated bouts of climbing. 

This is especially important for people that also sit in front of the computer typing for most of the day. In addition to restoring mobility, it is also extremely important to work on achieving muscle balance in the “whole upper quadrant” from the hand all the way up to the neck. 

If the injury in the hand or forearm is acute, cold baths 2’/2’ (2 minutes on / 2 minutes out) for 3-4 times twice per day is good to take the swelling down. 

If the injury is no longer acute (not hot and swollen) but still has residual swelling or continued joint tightness, then hot / cold contrast baths are ideal 2’/2’ (2 minutes hot / 2’ minutes cold) for 3-4 times twice per day. This is to help increase the blood flow and flush out the residual swelling that is there. 

Back to Climbing

As you get back into climbing, you need to be at least 75-80% strong in that whole upper quadrant and it’s recommended that you tape the fingers to give it support whether it’s a ligament or tendon injury or pulley strain, even if you no longer have any pain. 

It takes tendons and ligaments up to 4-6 weeks to fully strengthen and if you begin climbing too hard too soon, your muscles will get strong but your tendons, ligaments and pulleys will lag behind. 

Staying strong & Healthy

Do you want to stay healthy in order to send climbing projects or to just enjoy the rest of the climbing season injury free? Then the single one most important thing to staying injury free at this point 4-6 weeks post rehabilitation and climbing again is focusing on recovery. 

Recovery means keeping muscles loose and stretched out immediately after climbing, sports and activities and strengthening opposing muscles to the sport (climbing  – strengthening pectoralis major, triceps, deep neck flexor muscles and inner core stability strength). Also try implementing some cardio training (running and cycling); As this will increase your recovery overall, not to mention your body’s over endurance on longer climbs. Avoid over training (not taking enough rest days in between climbing sessions or doing too many heavy climbing sessions consecutively).

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Wil Seto, Registered Physiotherapist Send Email 

InSync Physiotherapy is a multi-award winning health clinic helping you in Sports Injuries, Physiotherapy, Exercise Rehabilitation, Massage Therapy, Acupuncture & IMS.