Pilates Rehabilitation for Football Injuries
When searching for a list of potential injuries that playing football potentially holds, you don’t have to look far. From the more minor of injuries like muscle cramps, sprains, hamstring pulls and whip lash, to the more intermediate of injuries like orthopedic, tendon, and joint issues to the more advance pool of torn ACL’s, broken bones, spinal injuries, muscular neurosis, and in some extreme cases paralysis, the list is inexhaustible.
It is no wonder that football players need to be in peak condition at all times, whether in the off or on season, because prevention is the number one concern of most athletes. The nature of football is one that doesn’t provide much margin for error, and when an injury does happen the levels by which the injury develops and subsides is overtly subjective. When treating any type of injury, the physician will be the final word in all things recovery. However, once a physician approves a recovery process. Pilates rehabilitation should be the first place that a football player on the injured list should turn to.
Pilates rehabilitation is unique in its multi-faceted approach to active recovery for all types of athletes, with all types of injuries. While Pilates rehabilitation isn’t a magic pill, a surgical procedure or a pseudo-religious series of chants it is a concise, precise, and successful series of exercises that can be customized to any injured athlete’s needs. This is mainly due to the variety of recovery options that is found in Palates concerning apparatus, positions and resistance.
Not only does Pilates focus on rehabbing an injury, its sole attention is directed towards whole-body wellness, this centralizes the intent of focus to complete and active recovery for the entire body’s circuit. This includes increasing stamina, flexibility, strength, breathing, mind-body control. By doing so an injured football player can emerge a stronger, more attuned person as well as an acutely physically able athlete, and return to the game.
One question may be what the difference between Pilates and Pilates rehabilitation may be. The founders of North Star Pilates studio in New York explain it this way, “The difference lies primarily with the application of the specific exercise. In Pilates, fundamental principles apply to movement. Those principles don’t change whether the exercise is used for rehab or fitness. What changes is how the principles are applied to the individual.”
Pilates for injured athletes has one main goal: to pinpoint the cause of injury and to correct the imbalance or the improper purchase of movement that caused the injury in the first place. For those injuries that are caused by blunt force, Pilates main goal is to reintroduce the body to its normal pattern of movement by realigning one’s neuromuscular pathways, and retraining the mind and the body to work as one unit to overcome the damage. The single goal being: whole body unity for curative purposes.
Pilates apparatus will provide the several links necessary to usher an injured player from the initial recovery stages to final recovery stages. The slant uphill grade that Pilates offers through its equipment allows for a gentle, long-term, safe and effective recuperation. Equipment like The Reformer and The Cadillac, as well as Mat Pilates, all offer different challenges to the body, which will keep the body active, and yield a continual graduation of progress.