Category: Other Sports Injuries

The sport I am into playing at this time is tennis. One day I’ll write about the ills suffered at the hands of the tennis demigods, but today Anna Chakvetadze is having issues. Specifically, she’s had to withdraw from the Porsche Tennis Grad Prix. She was tied 4-4 in the deciding third set against Zuzana Kucova.

This is the third time she’s withdrawn from a  tournament due to dizziness. She is concerned:

I started the match feeling fine, but I knew the dizziness was coming and started to feel worse in the second set. It was the same feeling as the two times before. I have seen a doctor and I don’t really have anything more to update with at the moment.

Today, Ryan Franklin blew his fourth save in five opportunities for the St. Louis Cardinals. The local media is going nuts with the headline in the St. Louis Post Dispatch screaming:

Road trip ends with thud on Franklin’s blown save

While I added the color and size, the description is straight from the article.

Some choice comments:

BB For Truth, I’m not sure what you are watching, but it’s not “baseball knowledge” that we are seeing. It’s inept managing by TLR, who’s thought of as some kind of rock star. Until this man is forced to make fundamental changes (unlikely), we are all subject to futile, crappy baseball that will continue to accomplish nothing. I’ve spent much time and money on this team in the past and refuse to do so any longer until TLR and DD are long gone.

Nothing beats biking for a wide range of athletic capabilities. You could be someone just starting a workout routine or someone who participates in triathalons, biking has a little something for everyone. All it requires is a sense of balance and the desire to have some fun.

The following are the most common biking injuries and how to prevent them:

Knee Pain: Knee pain can be caused by many factors, but with biking it is typically caused by improper seat adjustments. Your seat plays a pivotal role in ensuring your comfort, but also injury prevention. If your seat is too high or low you’re asking for knee pain. Make sure your knees extend all the way down through the pedal motion and your hips don’t rock.

Depression is a often overlooked malady in athletics. People seem to think that those who are vibrant, active and athletic cannot suffer from a mental illness. This is untrue.

Claudia Heill won a judo silver medal in the Athens Olympic games. Yesterday, she threw herself off a building and committed suicide.

Of course, depression doesn’t always lead to suicide. In Caludia’s case it seems everyone was surprised and shocked by what has happened.

Hubert Rohrauer, her former trainer, said:

“We met up only the evening before. Nobody could have predicted such an irrational action. She was a perfectionist and strong-willed.”

The Austrian Judo Association said:

Deeply shaken, we have received the news of the death of Claudia Heill on 03/31/2011.

With the advent of a new year, the rage is to do a polar bear plunge for charity. This is when a group of seemingly normal people decide to to jump into freezing cold water. They do this in the dead of winter and enjoy the experience. One of the participants from this year said:

You have no clue as to what we are about to do. These people are getting ready (to take the plunge), and we don’t have a plan.

Love it.

The problem with Polar Bear Plunges, which take place all across the country, is that they can cause injury if you aren’t prepared properly. Obviously, the safest thing to do is not take a Polar Bear Plunge, but if you do there are two things you need to worry about:

The hurdler Liu Xiang is probably the second most famous athlete from China outside of Yao Ming. It was crushing to the Chinese when Liu Xiang had to pull out of the hurdles in the Olympics, an even he holds the world record in. At the time it was reported he had a tendon injury, but it’s now specified. It turns out he had bone spurs between his Achilles tendon and foot bone. Ouch.

A hurdler puts a huge amount of stress on the legs, especially the feet. The feet are used to push over the next hurdle and to cushion the landing. A bone spur causes issues due to the pain and tenderness they cause.

If you’re like me you like to know all the details behind what is being done medically to you. It’s important to know the ins and outs of your sports injury treatment, because up to 25% of lingering issues are caused by patient inattentiveness to procedures and actions.

Past this, I love learning. I love being able to watch people explain what they do, why they do it and how it all ties together. To this end I’ve found watching procedures related to sports injuries fascinating.

The first place to look for procedure or surgery videos is, you guess it, You Tube.

You’re not going to find the best quality videos on You Tube nor will you find the most informative. The benefits of using You Tube are that the videos are embeddable and they tend to be shorter.