Preventing Basketball Injuries

Indiana is often thought of as synonymous with IndyCar racing and the Indianapolis 500, however no sport holds a more prominent place in the hearts of Hoosiers than basketball. From the NBA and college basketball all the way down to the youth level, Indiana is passionate about the sport. Basketball is a physically demanding sport involving sprinting, rapid deceleration, explosive jumping, and change of direction. With the physical demands of the sport and the congested schedule (often playing back-to-back days or multiple games in a single day) injuries can be a frequent occurrence.

Are Basketball Injuries Preventable?

Although injuries can never be completely prevented, steps can be taken to reduce the risk of injury. Injury reduction techniques can focus on general injury reduction or more specific injury reduction. General injury reduction techniques implement; proper movement patterns, strength, mobility and recovery to help reduce overall injury risk. We can address causes of a few injuries that frequently occur in basketball to provide a more specific injury reduction program.

What Are Some General Injury Reduction Techniques?

Injuries to muscles, tendons, ligaments and bone occur when the tissue is placed under greater stress than it can handle. The goals of injury prevention are to be able to reduce the acute and chronic stress that is being placed on a tissue and find ways to increase the tolerance of the tissue to handle greater stress.

How Can I Reduce Stress On The Body?

Athletes can reduce stress on their body with these steps:

• Taking weekly rest days where no practice or games occurs is a great first step to help recover from the physical and mental stress of basketball.
• Monitor how the athlete is feeling both physical and mentally to insure they are not training in an already fatigued state.
• Work with a sports performance coach or athletic trainer to ensure the athlete is not developing any compensatory movement patterns.
• Improper movement patterns can place excessive force through segments of the body that are not able to tolerate the increased load.

What Can Be Done To Increase The Tolerance Of The Tissue?

• Utilize a full-body active warmup to better prepare the body for athletic activities.
• Increase single leg strength.
  • Single leg strength can be overlooked in rehabilitation and sports performance training
  • Substantial portions of the game of basketball are played on one leg such as when running and jumping, however most strengthening exercises are completed on two legs
  • Look to add exercises such as single leg deadlifts and split squats
• Improve deceleration.
  • Injuries frequently occur during deceleration and cutting movements
  • Athletes often focus on speed and agility but do not spend enough time working on correct deceleration
• A quality sports performance program can help to reduce risk of basketball injury. This should include:
  • Jumping and landing mechanics
  • Quality movement patterns
  • Single leg strength
  • Deceleration
  • Power
  • Conditioning

What Are Some Injuries That Frequently Occur In Basketball And How Can I Reduce My Risk?

Common injuries in basketball are ankle sprains, patellar tendinitis, and ACL tears.

Ankle Sprains

An ankle sprain is an injury to the ligaments that stabilize the ankle. It frequently occurs when an athlete rolls their ankle.

Injury prevention program should focus on:

• Balance
• Ankle strengthening
  • Variety of calf raises, four-way TheraBand rehab, and balance exercises
• Hip strengthening
  • Glute Medius strength exercises (clam exercises)
• Maintaining ankle dorsiflexion (raising your foot toward your shin)
  • Mobilizations/calf stretching with a towel

Patellar Tendinopathy

Patellar tendinitis is an overuse injury to the tendon connecting your kneecap (patella) to your shinbone (tibia). It most often occurs in sports that involve repeated jumping.

Injury prevention program should focus on:

• Increasing quadriceps muscle strength
  • Squat and lunge variations
• Stretching when needed
  • Hamstrings and quadriceps
• Maintain ankle dorsiflexion range of motion
  • Mobilizations/calf stretching
• Improve landing mechanics
  • Land with increased hip and knee flexion to help absorb landing forces and take stress off the knees
  • Focus on soft and quiet landings

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear

The ACL is one of the primary stabilizers of the knee joint. Injury often occurs without contact during cutting or deceleration.

Recovery from an ACL tear typically involves surgery and 9 months of rehabilitation. Female athletes are statistically more likely to suffer an ACL injury.

Specific ACL prevention programs have been designed to reduce the risk of these injuries. Many ACL prevention programs were designed with soccer in mind but can be used for any sport. These programs take 15-20 minutes to complete and can be used as a basketball team's warmup.

• FIFFA 11+
• Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance Program