If you don’t really know what Sports Medicine is or are curious to find out, we here at Mensxp have got the lowdown for you. 

The Confusion And The Real Meaning Of Sports Medicine 

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Sports Medicine is a misconstrued specialty and confused to be the domain of Orthopedic and Arthroscopy based surgeons. Sports Medicine is a multi disciplinary science which primarily comprises of three broad specialties- Exercise Physiology, Orthopedic Medicine (conservative / non operative orthopedics) and Allied Medicine.

It Helps You Perform Better And Exploit Your Limits 

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The primary tenet of Sports Medicine is helping a person perform to his or her maximum, based on the physiological parameters, injury management or by working on modifiable factors influencing performance. To elaborate further, a Sports Medicine specialist should be able to test and evaluate a Physiological parameter specific to a sports discipline and suggest methods of further improvement. In terms of injuries the most important factor to determine is the cause of the injury which might be due to external factors such as inappropriate training methods, incorrect footwear, a racquet size or grip or a training surface which might be a factor besides looking for internal factors such as limb length misalignments or reduced strength or flexibility. Merely treating an injury might not be the correct approach as most sports injuries are due to repeated activities. In fact most sports injuries are Grade 1 or 2 injuries which can be managed conservatively. The most important aspect of injury management is to return to sport in the shortest possible time with adequate rehabilitation of the injury.

Olympians & Sports Medicine: The Relationship  

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If we go through the sociology of sports and sports performance by nations performing well in Olympic and International events, it will be noticed that they all have an excellent sports medicine and sports sciences program incorporated. All nations excelling in sports such as US, UK, Australia, China, Japan , Korea, erstwhile USSR, old Eastern bloc countries and even tiny nations such as Cuba have such a sports medicine and sports sciences program. Sports Medicine, classically, is for the overall performance of an athlete with a holistic approach. Ideally, sports medicine is to ‘identify, nurture, perform and retire’ in the context of the sportsperson. 

It Helps Bifurcate Athletes Based On Certain Parameters 

Sports medicine begins right from the stage of talent identification or identifying the best sports for a given athlete based on various physiological parameters. These athletes now need to be nurtured in terms of correct training methods, adequate nutrition, prevention and treatment of injuries, regular physical and clinical assessments. Now the stage is set  for  the  sportsperson  to  perform,  with  all  physiological  systems  adequately firing,  injuries  well  taken  care  of  and  rehabilitated,  all  nutritional  parameters adequate  for  performance  and  psychologically  tuned  to  hit  the  podium.  Finally, when  the  athlete  plans  to  call  it  a  day  he  should  be  gradually  weaned  of  high load  training  and  put  on  adequate  exercises  with  all  injuries  rehabilitated  and long term action plan for chronic injuries.