Newton Abbot Office

Today in the office I had a couple of phone calls from parents with regards of asking for advice of what they can do to help their child. One child had pulled their hamstring over the weekend whilst sprinting during their game, so they asked what they could do to help reduce their child’s pain. We went through details over the phone regarding what the injury looks like (if there’s any bruising, swelling or redness) and advised from there.

I then treated a coaches foot due to him playing football over the weekend and their opponent going in for a tackle and sliced his boot and sock causing a slice in the medial side of his heel. I provided general first aid by removing the steri-strips and cleaned the wound. I then redressed the wound with more steri-strips and applied a dressing over the top.

I then created a rehab plan for someone who has a shoulder dislocation. My supervisor asked if I could create one as a basic plan which can be adapted to suit individual needs shoulder dislocation rehab plan. Having a basic plan of what an athlete can do if they have these injuries will allow me to use less time in creating plans from scratch and instead it will allow me to be able to have more time in researching and analysing to progress and add more exercises where necessary.

I then discussed with the coaches to maybe adapt their warm up to add more dynamic exercises in order to help prevent future injuries. Discussing the timetable for strength and conditioning session every Monday with all age groups rotating. I suggested that I could possibly create a warm up plan for next week to help the S&C coach due to him being with his own team and runs over the S&C session by 10 minutes. If I was able to create a warm up relating to the session each week that the S&C coach has created it will be able to link in and tie together the whole session.

Cockington Primary School

Today due to the coach not being able to fully weight bear he had mentioned if I could possibly take lead for this after school club session. I felt a little nervous however after discussing with the coach what the plan was I felt a little more confident. Especially now that the children know who we are and trust us. Today we focussed on New Thinking from the SAINTS acronym. We mixed them up into mini groups, having to quickly think on the spot in changing directions and learning new skills on the spot. We then played a mini football game 4v4 game where we as coaches shouted out demands throughout the session so they needed to think on the spot.

Ashburton Regional Training

Today only three injuries occurred during the training session.

The first injury was a previous injury which has come back slightly. This athletes heel is starting to hurt again due to calf muscle tightness. The pain occurred due to an overstretch of his leg causing him to stretch his leg further than he could get which caused the pain to occur. We went through some stretches and he asked if I could apply K-Tape due to it helping in the past with this pain. His ROM was not limited, the pain was mainly coming from muscle tightness.

The second injury that occurred was a follow up injury from last week. His ankle injury has not affected the ROM. The athlete wanted me to check the ankle over to make sure he was able to play. I applied K-Tape (athletes request) and he carried on playing.

The third injury was another follow up injury, MCL injury from a few weeks ago. I wanted to find out how he’s been getting on with the exercises that was given to him last week, if he needed help with anything and how his pain has been. His pain is still slightly there feeling like a ‘pull’, he asked for some K-Tape to help support his knee as K-Tape seemed to have helped in the past and I personally think it is giving him the confidence to play again.

Over all I found these injuries to be easy for me to provide advice as these are the same injuries that occur pretty much every week. Due to being pitch side I was not able to do a lot unless injuries occur so I ensured that I provided the cool down at the end of the sessions for age groups U12, U13, U14, and U15. U12 and U13 were mixed together for the cool down (keeping them in their own age groups- Covid) and U14 and U15 were cooled down together, however again keeping them separate due to Covid guidelines.