Clinical hours – 13/04/2021

13/04/2021 –Marjon Football Club– Game Day – 4hrs

Treatment room:

This part of the session was for players needing treatment and having this before the warm-up began. During this session, I massaged the hamstrings of players and then performed some stretching techniques with them, so they were fully ready to start warming up and not injure themselves even more. I then performed some ankle taping on a player due to having weakened ankles from numerous ankle sprains. I also tapped another player on the ankles due to recently having an injury but too serious to play football, the tapped was applied for support.

Warm-up/game:

During this part of the session, I was asked to perform the warm-up with the players, this started with some gentle jogging, then ending in sprints, after that stretches and then ended with a game called ‘keep ball’ before the coach took over for a more in-depth training drill.

After the warm-up had finished, players then went back into the changing room to have one last chat before the game started and any treatment that players may have needed after warming-up. The game started, near the end of the game a player caught a knee into the back, the player then came off and I gave them a quick assessment to make sure it was nothing too serious. The player then informed me that they have been suffering from a bad back for a few weeks and was complaining of tightness, the player did return to the pitch not long after due to the pain easing. Once the game had finished, I stayed behind to see if any players needed any treatment, I was then approached by the player that game off with the back injury, I then performed a post-game massage to help relieve some if the tightness they were experiencing in the lower back. Post-game massage is used to increase blood circulation, remove metabolic waste and calm muscles down after activity. This also helps get rid of lactic acid that may have been built up from playing a game. Additionally, this helps prevents delayed muscle onset (DOMS), fatigue and tightness (Brummit, 2008).

As the training sessions have continued, I now feel more comfortable taking the warm-up sessions with the new and old players. A weakness of mine was that I am still nervous treating the new players as I don’t know what they prefer, and they don’t know me.

References:

Brummitt J. (2008). The role of massage in sports performance and rehabilitation: current evidence and future direction. North American journal of sports physical therapy : NAJSPT, 3(1), 7–21.