What are the most common training injuries?

Doctor Peter Lewis takes the time to answer some of the common fighter questions we get asked here at International Kickboxer.

Q. What are the most common training injuries you see and how do you treat them?

The most common training injuries that I see are anterior knee pain (chondromalacea patellae), shin splints and ankle sprains.

The first two are overuse injuries and the basis of treatment is prevention, specifically avoidance of high impact activities such as running and skipping. It is essential to modify exercise and change to low impact aerobic activity such as working rounds on the bags, bike, cross-training and exercise in water, especially shadow sparring in water. I have found several layers of elastic Tubigrip really good when I had shin splints and wanted to keep training. An anti-inflammatory medication such as Anaprox relieves the pain rapidly. Glucosamine sulphate is good for the long term treatment of chondromalacea.

Serious ankle injuries I like to immobilise in a CAM walker, which is like a ski boot. This stops further tearing of the ligament and prevents you ending up with a chronically loose ligament which would lead to recurrent injuries. I also think that balance exercises are very important in the rehab of ankle injuries after you come out of the boot. For martial artists, I like to use balance exercises such as standing on the injured leg and keeping the guard up to lift the centre of balance, while doing slow repetitive round house or sidekicks with the good leg. When this gets too easy you make it harder by standing on a jigsaw mat or cushion.

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