Play Sports? Here's How You Can Benefit From Visiting a Sports Medicine Specialist

If you’ve always been physically active and play sports, you want to avoid injury. Whenever a musculoskeletal problem sidelines you, you want to remedy it quickly but properly, so you don’t make the injury worse. What if you had a specialist to help you avoid injuries? 

At Coastal Empire Orthopedics, you receive treatment from board-certified orthopedic surgeons and a sports medicine specialist. These medical professionals form a team that treats patients of all physical abilities and helps those who play sports to reach their peak performance. Sports medicine is no longer limited to physicians who treat elite teams; it’s become mainstream medicine available to everyone. 

Benefits of a sports medicine specialist

The following are the benefits of appointments with sports medicine specialists. 

Focus on rehabilitation

Our team at Coastal Empire Orthopedics is expert at diagnosing and treating injuries associated with specific sports, including injuries to the neck, back, hip, knee, shoulder, elbow, ankle; we treat all types of musculoskeletal problems. 

Whether it’s an acute or chronic injury, our team can diagnose you very quickly. You don’t have to wait for weeks to get the necessary tests done because you can receive X-rays, MRIs, and bone density tests right in our office. Therefore, your treatment begins more quickly, and more importantly, ends faster than at many other orthopedic practices.  

If you’re held back by pain from previous injuries that keep popping up, we diagnose the problem. With the right combination of exercise therapy, splints or braces, and injections, we can often prevent the need for future surgery

Focus on prevention and conditioning 

Our team analyzes the moves you’re making that cause your pain and can provide strategies to correct biomechanical problems that have contributed to your chronic injuries. We can identify and correct the training errors or biomechanical abnormalities that hinder your performance. 

For example, by analyzing your workout shoes and the way you walk, we may see over or under pronation--the way your foot rolls too far outward or inward. Overpronation can lead to plantar fasciitis, bunions, heel spurs, and runner’s knee. Underpronation causes foot pain, as well as back and knee pain. 

If you play tennis, you’re running and pivoting while making a sudden stop, placing you at increased risk of kneecap and ankle sprains as well as Achilles tendon injuries. All of those overhead serves can lead to rotator cuff injuries. Our specialists are trained in exercise science; we provide conditioning exercises and strategies to prevent injuries. Our expert team can coach you on specific exercises to do regularly so that you strengthen the muscles around the affected joints and keep them lubricated. 

Focus on nutrition 

Your sports medicine specialist at Coastal Empire Orthopedics is trained to give nutritional guidance to help you feel and perform your best when playing sports or performing physical activity. He reviews your medical history, including allergies, medications, current diet and sleep patterns, and use of supplements. He often orders blood and urine tests.  

Research supports the importance of scientifically-based nutritional advice on your day-to-day diet as well as diet before, during, and after important sporting events. For example, a scientifically-based strategy tested on those in the normal population who run a marathon (as opposed to elite running professionals) helped the runners finish a marathon more quickly than those who used their own nutritional strategy. The same result occurred with cyclists in a time trial. 

Call or book an appointment online with Coastal Empire Orthopedics today for all of your musculoskeletal needs. 

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