Can Athletes Reduce Injury Risk?
Understanding where threat and vulnerability fit into the risk equation gives you a better chance of managing injury risks with athletes.
Functional Movement Systems’ programming is based on being more proactive. To Gray Cook, this means recognizing and reducing risks for injury. That process starts with breaking down risks into its two components: Threat + Vulnerability.
Often teams and groups ask for sport-specific exercises and warm-ups, but that doesn’t always factor in risk. With sports, we already know the threats - for example, the shoulder in overhead athletes. Threats are part of the sport, but vulnerability is about the individual. Youth sports often import exercises from the pros, but pros don’t always share the same vulnerabilities as youth: growing pains, weak cores and tight ankles.
Warm-ups must address these vulnerabilities, even if the exercises don’t look like the sport - say rolling or bear crawls to recalibrate the core for soccer players. If you put too much focus on threats of the sport over the vulnerability of the players, you’ll build skill on dysfunction. Instead, make the athletes ready for the sport.
Warm-Up with Indian Clubs
• Warm-Up with Indian Clubs