Inside MCBA: Nick McCarthy blog

 Inside MCBA (Myerscough College Basketball Academy) is a new feature which will see the coaching staff at the academy contribute regular educational blog posts to the site. Our first blog comes from academy Sports Therapist Nick McCarthy. Nick has a wealth of experience working as a sports theapist in the professional game, he currently works for the Manchester Giants and has previously worked for Mersey Tigers. Nick has also worked with Jordan Brand, British Basketball, Midnight Madness and the NBA.

 Prehabilitation

In this blog I will be talking about a few ways young athletes can help avoid or reduce the risk of injury. Obviously there are situations we cannot control where in a contact sport like basketball (yes I said contact sport!) injuries can occur, but as Coach Neal Hopkins always says we can only control the controllable.

Firstly it’s important to just touch on what I mean by injury in this context. Injury can occur to many structures in the body, the main structures that you hear about in basketball are the ligaments, due the high nature of ankle injuries seen usually on the lateral side affecting the anterior tailo-fibular ligament (ATFL), the calcaneo-fibular ligament (CFL) and the posterior tailo-fibular ligament (PTFL)  (or in light of the most recent high profile injuries the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)). Other structures seen can involve the muscular system; classic examples in explosive sports are the various grades of tear to the hamstring or attachment area to the bone in the tendon.  And it would be criminal not to involve skeletal injuries, I’m sure we have all seen the Kevin Ware injury on various social networking sites. Finally a system that people may not be classically aware of is the muscle fascia.

So on to the ways to reduce our injury risk……

Hydration

This is a simple concept. Keep the body hydrated and avoid pointless and avoidable muscular injuries. But why can dehydration cause injury? A dehydrated muscle fascia can leave the body feeling aches, stiff, and in some cases exhausted. Micro tears in this structure can cause inflammation just like it would with any injury and can cause fluids in the area to dry up. Knock on effects can be the contribution to muscle weakness due to constrictions on the muscle that it envelops and I’m sure you can put 2 and 2 together and realise how that can now tie into muscular injuries if a muscle cannot fully contract it will have a detraining effect and essentially weakness the muscle long term. Keeping yourself hydrated is a very easy step and is easy to monitor. Looking at the colour of you urine can be a good indicator of dehydration the darker the colour the more dehydrated we are in simple terms.

Muscle Function

Functional training is of key importance. Being able to move the body explosively without putting our joints into risky positions is key. At Myerscough basketball Academy, myself and Head of Strength and Conditioning Alex Hodgson focus on the smaller stability muscles in all exercises to ensure correct firing and activation of muscle. A main focus for us is on the Glutes. Control of Rotation at the hip (see figure 1 where the players knee is in the vulnerable position resulting in a rupture of the ACL) ensures that the knee can stabilise in a safe position, this also has a knock on effect all over the body in posture.

Figure 1. Screen grab from Derrick Rose’s ACL rupture. Notice the internal rotation of the left leg combined with valgus knee position and flexion.

If our body is able to stabilise in correct positions then all muscles can work efficiently to prevent excessive forces on structure that may be unable to cope. This is true of all joints in the body when playing, training, or in the gym. Safe and effective training with purpose in the gym is of absolute importance so when your Therapist or S&C coach give you the prompts to correct your form it is very important to do so to ensure that when you are on court and using these functional movement patterns your brain will have learnt a correct pattern and allow you to carry them out in the safest way to reduce risk.

Proprioception

Proprioception is the brains knowledge of where the limb is in space. This can be a common problem with the typical ankle sprain, especially when it comes to reinjury. When injury occurs it’s very easy to think about what structures have ‘strained’ or ‘torn’ what is sometimes forgotten about by players is the neurological effects. Proprioceptive training during the rehabilitation phase is a classic protocol (figure 2 shows a classic used proprioception exercise). In this instance let’s look at avoidance of that injury. As a player I’m sure most of you have used the euro step as a move to get to the basket. This is a great example of a complex movement that will involve knowledge of where to step and place your leg and foot….proprioception. So when training trying to add balance exercises that challenge you and reach out of your base of support can help both stabilise the joint and allow the brain to discover how to stabilise in vulnerable positions. With an increase proprioception you can now tell your feet where to land and how to land in a safe area.

Figure 2. Reaching the toes out along the white lines can challenge balance, and hip stability whilst training where to place the leg.

So there are a few examples of how you can start to avoid avoidable injury. No one wants to sit in the stands when you could be on court.

 Nick McCarthy BSc (Hons) MSOST