The five most common baseball injuries
Injuries, every baseball player has to deal with them. We understand that this is very annoying, because who wants to get injured. We received an article from a physiotherapist about the most common injuries, about how you can prevent these injuries and if you do get an injury, how can you best treat it?
1: a torn ankle ligament
If you have to run from base to base when playing baseball, there is a chance that you will sprain your ankle. If you sprain your ankle, the ankle ligaments can stretch or tear. This usually concerns the outer ankle ligaments, which can be damaged by a sudden twisting of the ankle. If you have a torn ankle ligament, you suffer from pain on the outside of the ankle, swelling on the ankle (a thick ankle), a bruise on the ankle, redness of the skin on the ankle and/or a stiff, less mobile ankle. Exactly which symptoms you experience and to what extent depend on the degree of the injury. In the case of a serious tear in the ankle ligament, for example, you will have more symptoms than with a stretched ankle ligament which has not yet been torn.
2: whiplash
The calf muscles are elastic, but this does not mean that you can stretch them indefinitely. If you stretch the calf muscles too much, for example through an unnatural movement when running or a wrong movement when running from a standstill, you can suffer from whiplash. In this case, the fibres in the muscles are over-stretched or even torn, causing annoying pain in the calves. If you strain the muscles of the calves for too long and with insufficient recovery time, you can also suffer from this injury. If you suffer from whiplash, you will suffer from a painful calf, swelling in the calf, reduced muscle function of the muscles in the calf and a weakened feeling in the calf. With this injury too, there are various degrees of pain, with serious injuries automatically causing more pain than less serious injuries.
3: bursitis of the elbow
When you play baseball, you not only work a lot with your legs, but your arms have to work hard as well, which can result in an injury in the arms, for example in the elbow. Behind the elbow runs a bursa, which can become inflamed. Do you suffer from an inflamed bursa in the elbow, then it is called bursitis elbow. You can get bursitis in the elbow by overloading the joint, but also by a fall. Especially if you often have to catch hard balls in your baseball glove and recover insufficiently after training or playing games, there is a chance that you develop bursitis of the elbow. If you have bursitis in the elbow, you suffer from pain (pressure on the bursa behind the elbow), increasing pain when moving the elbow, stiffness of the elbow, local temperature differences and redness of the elbow.
4: bursitis of the shoulder
As the bursa in the elbow can become inflamed, the bursa in the shoulder can also become inflamed. As is also the case with the elbow, this happens mainly by overloading or a fall while playing baseball. Often you get bursitis in the shoulder in combination with injury to the tendons in the shoulder joint, which causes extra pain. If you have had bursitis in the shoulder while playing baseball, you will suffer from pain around the shoulder joint, redness, swelling and warmth of the shoulder and you will even have difficulty lifting your arm. With a severe inflammation of the bursa in the shoulder, it is not even possible to lift the arm far.
5: tennis elbow
The last injury commonly suffered by baseball players is tennis elbow. Tennis elbow is an inflammation on the outside of the elbow caused by overuse of the extensor muscles of the hand. These muscles run from the wrist joint to the outside of the elbow and are often used when playing baseball. If you suffer from tennis elbow, you may find it difficult to continue playing at the same level or even be out of the game altogether. If you are dealing with tennis elbow, then you are suffering from pain on the outside of the elbow which radiates out to the forearm and wrist. If you strain, the pain becomes more severe. Tennis elbow in an advanced stage can even lead to loss of strength and coordination, but fortunately this does not happen very often.
