Ankle Taping: Good News/Bad News

Those of you who have read some of my past entries know that ankle sprains are the most common injuries in basketball.

Research has shown that, once you sprain your ankle, you are more likely to injure that ankle again.

Research has also shown that ankle taping can decrease the risk of having a second (or third, or fourth or...) ankle injury.

While many players tape up before each practice or game, others do not because they worry that this might impair their performance on the court.

In this article from the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, researchers from Spain compared the effects that ankle taping had on the vertical jump and the balance of 15 active young men (average age = 21 years).

They found no significant difference in their vertical jump or balance when their ankles were taped or not taped. This information might make people more likely to tape their ankles and not worry that it will impair their performance.

At the same time, however, they also found that the ground reaction force (the force of impact when the body lands) of the vertical jumps was significantly greater on the knees when the subjects had their ankles taped.

This is likely due to the fact that the ankle taping made the ankles "stiffer" and less able to absorb the landing force. In this way, more force was transferred to their knees to act as shock absorbers.

I would like to see a similar study performed with some of the more common ankle braces, which are likely to be less tight than a freshly wrapped ankle. And, to make it more applicable to real-life basketball athletes, the testing should have been performed after letting the subjects play basketball for 15-30 minutes (during which tape jobs often loosen up). And, while we're on the subject of improving the study, it should also include younger athletes of both genders and more tests (agility, speed, etc.)

The take home message? This does not lead to an all-or-none decision for or against taping ankles. For those who worry that ankle taping might decrease their vertical jump and adversely affect their balance - fear not. But for those whose main concerns are patellar tendonitis, Osgood-Schlatter and other knee overuse injuries, keep in mind that taping ankles may play a role in your knee pain.

Roll 'Em!

I love it!

More and more information that used to be available only on VCR tapes or DVDs is now being streamed via the internet.

Research has shown that the risk of repeat ankle injuries can be decreased by taping or wearing an ankle brace. Similar support can be given to other injured joints that can help reduce pain and increase function.

A recent Web Alert from the American College of Sports Medicine let me know about a nice resource online that can give health care providers a refresher course on taping joints.

It's available through Mueller Sports Medicine, a company that supplies taping materials, braces and other protective devices for use by athletes.

http://www.muellersportsmed.com/taping/taping.html

It's a nice review for athletic trainers, therapists and other people who frequently tape up athletes, featuring Mueller products.

Like the disclaimer on the video says - "The information contained in this program.....should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment of a medical condition".

What Female Basketball Players Kneed to Know

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/gallery/acl/flash.htm

Basketball season starts in 6-8 weeks.

Just enough time for you to do something important.

In previous blogs, I've discussed various knee injuries, including the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury, a serious knee injury for which female athletes are 3 to 6 times more likely to suffer than their male counterparts.

Here's some more information from a recent article in The American Journal of Sports Medicine that examined knee injuries among boys and girls on High School teams in the United States.

• Knee injuries were three times more likely to happen in a game than in a practice (not surprising, since practice is usually less intense and takes place in a more "controlled environment" than games).
• The highest rates of knee injuries for girls in the study were seen in soccer and basketball.
• Female high school basketball players were almost twice as likely to sustain a knee injury compared to the male players in the study.
• Almost half of the knee injuries to girl basketball players caused them to lose more than 3 weeks of their season (or end their season or their career).
• More than 1/3 of all knee injuries suffered by the female high school basketball players required surgical repair.
  

So what do female basketball players "kneed" to know?

Although not as combative a sport as football or wrestling, playing basketball puts the female athlete at a higher than normal risk for a knee injury that can end her playing career. While female players can't hope to avoid contact in what is becoming a high-contact sport, and they can't change the way they are built, they can significantly reduce their risk of suffering an ACL injury by spending the next 6-8 weeks working on an ACL injury reduction program.

For a list of some of the available programs, scroll down some and click on the PEP Program or the Girls Can Jump links in the Injury Prevention section found on the right hand side of this blog.

If you're a female basketball player, it's no longer an option. It's something you "kneed" to do.

Don't Forget to Bring the Cooler !

basketballhoopsunlimited.com

Summer (with its heat and humidity) is almost over, but it's always a good time to think about ways to improve your performance.

For those of you living (and playing ball) in hot, humid climates, here's an interesting study from the United Kingdom that appears in the September 2008 issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Researchers wanted to examine the effects of drinking a cold liquid (instead of one at room temperature) on an athletes body temperature, heart rate, and endurance in the heat.

They took 8 young men (average age =22) and had them pedal on a bicycle to exhaustion in a hot and humid environment, once while drinking a warm (98.6 degrees fahrenheit) liquid and once while drinking the same amount of liquid at a cooler temperature (~39 degrees) .

They found that compared with the warmer liquid, drinking a cold drink before and during exercise in the heat reduced physiological strain (kept the body cooler) and increased the athletes' endurance capacity by more than 20%.

So what does that mean for you? The next time your team is scheduled to play a tournament outside or in a hot gym environment, it might be worth the cost and effort to store your drinks

(water, sports drinks) in a cooler. Don't like to be the one to carry the cooler(s)? Then you can ride the Cooler Train (above). It might help you get where you want to go.

Another Use for a Pillow

Want to improve your agility?
Want to reduce your risk of an ankle or knee injury?
Work on your balance.

Among the many skills a basketball player requires, good balance helps you move quickly in different directions, react to changes on the court, and avoid injury.

One popular exercise used to both evaluate and improve balance is the single leg balance test.

While you can go online to find lots of different programs to improve your balance, people often tell you that you need special equipment, like a BOSU, wobble board, or balance disc.

While these are all useful for more advanced balance and proprioceptive training, not everybody has access to a health club or can afford to buy them to use them at home.

One solution is laying there on your bed.
Yep, your friendly neighborhood pillow.

If you've already perfected your single leg balance on the floor (with hands on hips, eyes closed and supporting knee slightly bent x60 seconds) then you're ready to use your pillow.

Place it on the floor and perform a single leg balance exercise with your foot on top of it.
If that's still too easy, try 2 pillows. That should give you a good start.

Working on your balance using pillows at home is an easy and inexpensive way to improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.

Just don't forget to wash the pillow cover once in a while or else you might start dreaming of sweaty feet.

Breathe Easily

If you or someone you know is a basketball player who has asthma (like Dominique Wilkens, shown above), here's useful website that I recently read about.



Azma.com, gives you the chance to check out the allergy and air-quality levels for any zip code in the United States. They also have a place where you can sign up for asthma alerts by e-mail on the days that your local ashtma index level might be a concern.



Unless it's severe, asthma shouldn't stop someone from playing basketball. But it's important to know that playing basketball with asthma CAN cause significant breathing problems. In fact, an article from the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (volume 113, nuber 2, Feb 2004) found that basketball was the sport most often associated with deaths in athletes with asthma (13 over a period of 7 years).

So what can you do? If you have asthma, work with your doctor to create an asthma action plan that uses medicine to control your asthma and/or rescue you from an attack, make sure you take the time to warm up before playing, and avoid triggers (like high pollen counts, smoke, and poor air-quality) that might cause an asthma attack.

Take care of your asthma, then take it strong to the hoop.

When Muscles Break Down Too Much

from http://www.technion.ac.%20il/

After a talk I gave to a group of basketball players on their way to an international tournament, a young lady came up to me and asked me if I knew about rhabdomyolysis. She had been diagnosed and treated for it in a hospital and was worried that it might happen again. I told her that, while I was familiar with it, I needed to do a little research first before getting back to her.

Here's what I found:

Exertional rhabdomyolysis is a rare illness that happens when a person has an intense physical activity that breaks down their muscles. While there is always a little muscle breakdown that occurs with heavy exercise, this is much more severe. The muscles cells break apart and the injured muscles release myoglobin, creatine kinase and other muscle cell contents into the blood stream.

Mild and moderate cases can cause high levels of sodium, potassium, phosphorous and calcium in the blood. This can lead to pain and swelling of the muscles, stomachache, nausea and back pain. In more severe cases (very rare), the myoglobin gets into the urine, causing it to become a dark tea or brown color. When the myoglobin is this concentrated, it can injure the kidneys. In fact, if left untreated really severe cases can lead to clots in the blood, kidney failure and even death.

Now this doesn't happen very often. Most players can push themselves during workouts and games without having to worry about it. But there are some things to avoid if you want to decrease the chance of this happening to you.

Things that INCREASE a person’s risk for exertional rhabdomyolysis/make it MORE likely to happen include:

* high temperatures and humidity levels,
* poor physical conditioning
* not drinking enough fluid
* taking certain medicines like aspirin
* cocaine or alcohol abuse and/or
* recent viral illness (cold, flu).
* Having Sickle cell trait

Things that REDUCE the risk of exertional rhabdomyolysis/ make it LESS likely to happen include:

* Limiting exercise that pushes you to the brink of your ability
* Limiting exercise in higher than average temperatures
* Making sure that you consume enough carbohydrates and that you have sufficient rest periods to enhance the body’s ability to convert the carbohydrate to glycogen
* Keeping well hydrated at all times

If you're a basketball player with a history of kidney disease, heat exhaustion and/or previous case of rhabdomyolysis, you should see a doctor (and get blood and urine testing) if you experience brown discoloration of your urine, have back or stomach pain, or pain and swelling in your legs or arms that comes after a period of high intensity exercise. You might need intravenous (IV) fluids and be admitted to the hospital to make sure you recover well and future exercise might need to be adjusted to keep it from happening again.

Again, I don't want to keep anyone from playing the game. Just use the recommendations above to reduce your risk, use your common sense and, if you think you might be suffering from this condition, get help from your doctor.