Across the Copper Country’s school district, many students participate in athletics. And each year many students experience injuries or develop chronic conditions that can limit their athletic ability. Next week Aspirus Keweenaw will help educate student-athletes, parents, and coaches on how to prevent common injuries, ways to train with purpose, and the anatomy behind injured joints, muscles, and ligaments.
For hockey players, you know, laboral injuries for their hips or impingement happening. There are ways to try to avoid that. You know, sometimes it might happen regardless, but there are ways to avoid that at the hip. For the knee, you know, for a lot of female athletes, you see ACL tears just because of the way that their hips are formed and the angles that they have. There are strengthening protocols that are out there that exist to avoid that. You know, and there’s a bunch of different things that can happen at the knee. Some younger kids get Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, where they get that bump on the front of their shin. Understanding what that is, how to find it early on, maybe when they’re in sixth or seventh grade for parents to identify it and get it under control so that they have a good varsity sports career. – Brett Gervais, Physical Therapist, Aspirus Keweenaw
Many students participate in multiple sports says Physical therapist Brett Gervais. Often making recovery time in between seasons and training regiments short. Which can increase the likelihood of re-injuring a tear from the previous season.
Understanding what’s appropriate for a seventh or eighth grader. That’s not always what you’re gonna have your seniors do. And so there’s a lot of individualization that happens in athletics. The biggest thing for our area is that our basketball players are also football players, and they also run track, and they also play baseball in the summertime. Our kids do everything. – Brett Gervais, Physical Therapist, Aspirus Keweenaw
Gervais adds that for coaches and parents, the clinic offers good advice and information to look out for while encouraging their students on the field or the court. Parents can be the biggest advocate for an athlete to take some time to rest.
Maybe a sprint workout or, you know, just weightlifting in general, something like that. The parents might look back at this and say, Hey, you know, I remember them saying, you know, your ACL is kind of susceptible to tear. If you’re not strong through your hips and stuff, you should probably go to that. You know, the parents are kind of the first and foremost, the most important thing to encourage their kids to be doing this stuff. So I think that’ll be insightful for them. And then coaches, coaches are always learning new things and they want to grow. They want to give their team the best chance. – Brett Gervais, Physical Therapist, Aspirus Keweenaw
On March 15th the Student Athlete Injury Prevention Clinic will start at 1pm. Gervais says families, students, and coaches can stop in and join the educational fun throughout the event. Aspirus Keweenaw does ask participants to register so organizers can make sure enough professionals are available for groups.Register for the event by calling Aspirus Keweenaw at 906 337 6541. The event is free, registration is required. The Clinic will take place at the Aspirus Keweenaw Outpatient Therapies and Fitness Center located on US-41 in Calumet.
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