Injury Prevention: Responsibility of all Teachers & Coaches Dr. Dimitrios Zacharopoulos

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Sport injuries, including muscles, tendons and ligaments, may happen during all kind of martial arts training. An acute injury can cause a short or long term termination of one’s training schedule. A chronic injury may result in a permanent inability for high-quality training because a martial artist in order to cope with his/her less functioning joints cannot execute the right movements. It is well known that small injuries that cause bearable, mild pain, as they accumulate, day by day, month by month, eventually provoke a bad impact. This kind of chronic injuries can also result to frustration and, most important, to long term kinetic problems.

Working as a doctor for the Women’s Water polo Team of Greece (1998 – 2004), I observed that the following measures helped a lot and protected the athletes from severe injuries, despite the fact that they used to have five to six hours of training daily.

Warm up — Stretching

Warming up improves blood and oxygen supply. It is essential even in anaerobic effort. We have to start with mild effort in slow motion in order to give the ‘information’ to our body that a strong effort is coming up sooner or later. Blood flow increases gradually which is more effective in muscle protection.

Stretching always follows warm up and never precedes it. It is dangerous to extend a stiff ‘rubber’! Since this part of training is very important, teachers need to insist in focused, gentle movements which include the entire body. Muscles that support or rotate our body (abdominal, dorsal) should be prepared and stretched in order to avoid low back pain. Weapons training stress the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints; therefore, we cannot forget to prepare them also.

Stretching is done slowly and with caution. When an agonist muscle is contracting, the antagonist is stretching. For example, when quadriceps femoral is contracting, the biceps femoral is stretching, which means that contraction needs to be executed slowly. For example, the front kicks.

Basic Techniques (Kihon)

Perform basic techniques slowly. Teacher supervision protects the martial artists from injuries, especially when they hold a weapon long or short, light or heavy, with one or two hands. Any wrong movement can cause an injury (acute or chronic) when one makes a high number of repetitions in training.

When someone holds a weapon with both hands (Bo, Eiku) wrong movement of one hand, provokes the other hand, or even the whole body to make an unorthodox movement in order to compensate. For these reasons teachers need to be meticulous from the very beginning of the training. Basic techniques need to be done slowly, at the beginning, and/or during the course of the training.

I had the privilege to meet a great Serbian water polo coach, Nikola Stamenic*, who had already won Olympic and World Championship medals.

I recall him saying: “I deeply respect budo training. It always starts with the very first, simple techniques. Budokas, no matter the rank they have to do the techniques so many times as if it was their first lesson.”

I also remember the training of Serbia’s National Team before a World Championship tournament. The players started with one meter distance passing balls. How many times must they have done this simple technique during their career! And, believe me, they were great players. They started slowly, under the supervision of their coach. Gradually they increased the distance and the speed of passing the ball. They did the same with shooting the ball. After one hour the quality was enormous. I felt so lucky watching a high quality training which started as kindergarten training. “Wrong technique provokes injury, at least” he used to say. So, good technique, it starts from the basics and it is essential in order to avoid injuries.

Teachers need to emphasize smoothness, focus (kime), timing and breathing for the same reason. Stiffness at the beginning of the movement is not good for the muscles, tendons and joints. Martial artists need to execute a single technique or a series of techniques that kata requires with 100% focus on each movement. It is especially essential when a martial artist is training with a weapon. Repetitive poorly executed techniques may cause repetitive minor injuries that finally, after months or years may cause severe inability.

Strength Development

Strength development is a part of training that can be performed after the warm-up and stretching, and/or before basic techniques and kata training. Nevertheless, it can also be done as extra training. Isotonic exercises such as the use of elastic bands dumb bells and/or free weights are useful. Also, training using only one’s body weight such as push-ups, squats and pull-ups is essential. This sort of training builds up strong muscles, tendons and ligaments; and, subsequently strong joints. Also, strong muscles improve the movement of the body, along with the speed, which is important when someone uses a heavy weapon.

Post Training – Relaxing

Muscles need to be relaxed after training. Metabolic products need to be eliminated. For this reason, someone needs to have time to repeat the stretching exercises done at the beginning of the lesson, and teachers need to be aware of that. They should insist and supervise martial artists during this part of training. After strong effort one needs to get rid the metabolic products, especially oxygen radicals, by improving topical blood flow, via stretching. Otherwise muscles will remain stiff until the next lesson making things more difficult. Stiff muscles can be the reason of non-expected tendonitis after several days or weeks. It is imperative that teachers and coaches include post-training relaxing in their lessons.

Sport physiology and traumatology is a specialty that analyses, among other issues, the protection from injuries. I strongly believe that teachers can participate in that protection with the knowledge and skills they have, by insisting on them and highly supervise their students. Although injuries are inevitable, they can be mild, and the time of rehabilitation very short, following these simple rules.

** Doctor Dimitrios Zacharopoulos Anesthesiologist (Ret.) Aghia Sofia Children’s Hospital Athens, Greece

* Nikola Stamenic, also known as “The General," is a Serbian water polo coach widely considered as one of the greatest coaches in water polo history.

https://prabook.com/web/nikola.stamenic/2104053

** Since 1973, Dr. Zacharopoulos has studied Judo, Hakko Ryu Jujutsu, Matsubayashi Shorin Ryu Karate Do and Ryu Kyu Kobudo.