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What To Do To Prevent Sports Injury?

Sport is really very engaging and enjoying thing. No matter which sport you choose but if you will involve too much then the possibilities of injuries becomes high. Especially, passionate players usually get too much involved in their games and thus the risk probabilities increases automatically. You just cannot skip playing games so you would need to consider something else? Sports are important for our body but you can reduce risk factors with the help of some prevention.

sport injury

Sports injury

The sports injury does not get worse in kids and they can be covered with little treatment but if you are playing in tournament or professionally then the injury risks would be definitely higher. Here I am sharing with you some prevention and security tips for athletes that will help them to stay fit and risk free.

Taping
Bracing
Appropriate clothing
Suitable foot wear
Helmet
Wrist guard
Knee pad
Elbow pad
Protective eye wear
Mouth guard

Most importantly, sports is a task of enjoyment and it has been discovered that most of the sports injury happens when player gets tired so it is advised for all players to play for suitable period of time. Playing when you are tired is the biggest mistake for an athlete. So, you should enhance your capacity and when you play then you should understand your physical potential and it is worse mistake to take chance in sports on the basis of your potential so never try to do it.

Every sport offers enjoyment along with some possible sports injury so it should not be a thing of your worry. Just try to become perfect and skilled in your game and that will always help you to stay safe and protected. Additionally, the protective equipment will help you to perform even better. There is now medical mobility equipment that is available for sport person who got injured. These are like wheelchairs, scooters, power chairs, knee walkers, etc. You may find them online for purchase or for rent.

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Why The Surface That You Practice On Matters

If you’re involved in an athletic sport you know that there are a lot of factors that contributes to you performing well. Whether it’s your first practice of the week or the fifteen minute warm up before the big game, it’s important to practice with the right equipment so that you don’t injure your body or play horribly.

grass

Besides learning the right technique and mastering your skill, there are indirect components that are important when you practice. For example, if you play with a deflated ball, that might affect the way you are able to kick. Little things like the air pressure in a ball or the weight in a baseball bat can alter the way you practice and inevitably play. This is why it is so important that you practice properly so you can ultimately perform your best.

Even if the sport you play on uses a hardwood or dirt surface, it’s still important to practice on a surface consisting of grass. Not only is it great to practice in different environments but training outside on the grass is also more beneficial to your body.

Pro’s and Con’s of Grass Surfaces

Low Impact on Your Legs – Some sports like soccer, football, and lacrosse are always played on a grass field. This is ideal because grass is the best surface to run on, it helps your muscles to work hard without the heavy impact other surfaces may cause on your legs. Since sports injuries are common, practicing on a low impact surface like grass will help to reduce potential joint pain and soften the impact if you fall or tumble down.

Uneven Terrain – Although grass is an ideal surface to practice on, there are a couple of things to watch out. One of the main con’s of training or practicing on grass is the uneven terrain. Areas of natural grass, that hasn’t been formatted for athletic use may have hills or holes that you may be unable to locate. Since an area like a park or trail is natural, it hasn’t been smoothed out which can be potentially dangerous to runners.

Great for Practice – Although other sports like basketball, cheerleading and hockey aren’t played on grass surfaces. There is still practice and training required in any sport that you want to excel in. During practices it is great to work outside. Whether you are running or going over some new plays, practicing outside with fresh air and on the grass surface is better for your body overall.

Allergies – Even though grass is nature’s finest, some people have allergies or conditions that practicing on a grass surface won’t help. Sometimes practicing on artificial grass won’t cause any irritation but if it does, you may want to find other areas to practice.

Practicing on the right surface is important and matters to your body. Practicing on a grass surface allows you to work your body just as hard while reducing injury to your legs, and allows you to practice outside which is always better because you can intake more oxygen. Even though natural grass surfaces come with a couple of con’s, it is generally always better to practice on a grass surface.

Victoria is a blogger for The Grass Outlet in Austin, Texas. She loves playing soccer outside and being able to enjoy the fresh air.

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College Athletes Attempt to Form a Union With The NLRB

National Labor Relations Board

In case you missed it, on January 28th current and former NCAA student-athletes filed a petition in Chicago with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in attempt to be recognized as employees of the NCAA and its institutions.

ESPN’s Outside The Lines first reported that Ramogi Huma, president of the College Athlete Players Association (CAPA), filed the petition on behalf of some of the Northwestern football players. CAPA is the formal advocacy entity that will represent college athletes if the NLRB deems these athletes to be employees. The path that has led college athletes to this position started with the Northwestern quarterback, Kain Colter, who wanted to help give all college athletes improved conditions as college athletes.

Why Form A Union?

Many people question the motives of the Northwestern football players attempting to unionize in order to gain more benefits than they already receive. NCAA Chief Legal Officer, Donald Remy, stated, “many student athletes are provided scholarships and many other benefits for their participation. There is no employment relationship between the NCAA, its affiliated institutions or student-athletes.”

Ramogi Huma thinks “athletes deserve an equal voice when it comes to their physical, academic and financial protections.” Some of the concerns that Huma and college players have are similar to the goals of the National College Players Association (NCPA), an organization Huma founded to create a platform for college athletes to voice their opinions on NCAA rules. Some of these goals include:

Minimizing college athletes’ brain trauma risks
Raising scholarship amounts
Covering players sports-related medical expenses
Increasing graduation rates

All of these goals seem to correspond with the purpose of college athletes forming a union through the NLRB. Analyzing these goals can give a better understanding of why college athletes want to be able to advocate on their own behalf.

Northwestern, The NLRB Taking A Stand

Northwestern football

Although concessions and head injuries are constantly in the news in regards to the NFL, it seems that concussions are not being taken as serious as needed by the NCAA. Given these allegations from former players, current and future players should be able to have a say with their health in terms of having the proper precautions to prevent, detect and treat any head injury. Creating a union will give college athletes a better opportunity to contribute their thoughts to this issue.

Parallel to the physical condition of college athletes is how medical bills are paid if athletes are injured.

Currently, the NCAA does not require schools to cover sports-related injuries. Institutions are given the option if they want to cover these injuries. However, the NCAA (as well as every college) requires students to have some form of medical insurance, whether it is through the school, parents or the athlete themselves.

Nevertheless, since the NCAA does not mandate colleges to pay medical insurance for athletes, it can lead to some athletes paying out of pocket for their injuries. Seeking to unionize may provide better and more uniformed standards from the NCAA and its institutions regarding medical insurance for college athletes.

Finances Flunking Out

In addition to college athletes’ physical condition, their financial condition is important too. Some athletes would not be able to attend their current college without vast financial assistance. Currently, an athletic scholarship only covers tuition and other school-related fees, but it does not cover basic necessities a college athlete may need but cannot afford.

Although some college athletes are eligible for federal financial aid, allowing them to supplement funds through this route takes away from other college students that need those funds, which can add up to $3,000 per college athlete. The NCPA suggests using a relatively small percentage of TV revenues to provide college athletes the actual cost of attendance.

Putting The “Student” Back In “Student-Athlete”

Another crucial position for college athletes wanting to unionize is to increase graduation rates. After all, these players are recruited as “student-athletes” and the NCAA continues to insist that education is its main goal.

However, the goal of achieving an education can hardly be attained with such low graduation rates, which include huge racial graduation gaps. Many may blame this issue on college athletes leaving early for the professional leagues, but only an exceptionally small amount of college athletes play professional sports.

So if college athletes leaving early for professional leagues aren’t the reason for low graduation rates, what is? Could it be because some high school athletes are brought into educational situations that are nearly impossible for them overcome? This is a complex question that does not have an easier solution, but NCPA suggests that if more educational resources are provided to athletes, better results will transpire.

Chances Northwestern And The NLRB Win

Given the various reasons why college athletes would want to unionize, what is the likelihood that this would happen? In order to unionize, college athletes have to be verified as employees of their institutions. As Alicia Jessop points out, there are two tests the NLRB could use to determine the status of college athletes as employees.

Right To Control Test

One is a common law test known as the “right to control test.” This test is usually used to determine if an individual is an independent contractor versus an employee. However, there was an issue brought before the NLRB to determine if students that served as teaching assistants, research assistants and proctors at Brown University were employees. In this situation, the NLRB created its own test that strictly involved students and their university. The NLRB considers four factors for this test:

The workers’ status as students.
What role the work completed played in their education.
The relationship between the students and their bosses.
Whether the financial support the workers received was dependent upon the nature or value of the services they performed.

The overarching issue to be determined while considering this test is if the relationship between the student worker and the university is a relationship based upon economical or educational gains.

For most Division I college athletes, these relationships are often obscured. On one hand, the main reason these athletes are in college is to gain an education and their athletic scholarship helps assist the objective of attaining an education. On the other hand, these college athletes are bringing in massive economical gains to their respective institutions on a yearly basis. Since the NLRA only governs private institutions, other college athletes at public universities looking to follow suit with the Northwestern football players will have to go through their own state laws in order to gain status as employees.

The NCAA’s Case

The NCAA will use its plethora of resources to ensure that college athletes are not given the status as employees in order to prevent mandatory medical insurance coverage and guaranteed athletic scholarships. CAPA will use its resources to ensure college athletes have more of a voice during their college careers. The concern now is whether the NLRB ascertains Northwestern football players as employees. As discussed, this determination is established by a number of different factors. However, if Northwestern football players are unable to gain employee status, other public university college athletes may petition their state laws in order to gain employee status.

If there is one takeaway from the Northwestern football players attempting to unionize, it is that the current system does not work. This attempt to unionize is continuing the conversation on how to improve the current system.

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Beijing Olympics 2008

In this first part I’d like to give you some more information regarding the “bird’s nest”. This Beijing national stadium which is being built in Beijing for the Olympic games of 2008 is with no doubt thé most impressive stadium you’ve ever seen in your life!China is really overdoing it and not without any reason, no, these Olympic games of 2008 (which are being held in Beijing) is China’s chance to really show herself to the world, her chance to let the world know how important China will be in the future.

Thus they’re doing their very best to make the most impressive stadiums for the sport categories of the Olympics in the world! Probably the two most impressive buildings will be the Bird’s nest (The National stadium) and the so called ‘Bubble’ (Beijing National Aquatics Center)…first up: The Bird’s Nest.

In this huge national stadium the openings ceremony will be held. After the ceremony this venue will also be used for athletics and for football. The total land surface of the building is around 258,000 sq. m. and it will have about 91,000 seats. The design refers to (obviously) a bird’s nest, this idea has been thought of by a Swiss company called ‘Herzog & DeMeuron’. Together with The China Architecture Design institute they completed the design and they’re already pretty far with actually building the stadium. They’ve started with the construction in December 2003 and they’ve now completed the main ground- and framework (Which can be seen on the pictures) by the time the Olympics will begin at the 8th of august (month no.8) 2008 at 8 minutes over 8 o’clock (you can understand..8 is the lucky number of China) the venue will most definitely be completely finished and ready for the games! (unlike some venues back in Athene,2004) One of the demands for building this huge venue was that it would be earthquake resistant, this has been solved by not attaching everything to each other (qua framework) but by making the bird’s nest in three different framework parts. This way the parts will be able to move separately and freely from each other and thus being a lot more resistant against earthquakes. Now that the exterior and fundamental parts are finished (nov. 2006), they will start with the interior and the bird nest will be finished around the end of next year, or in the beginning of 2008. So what to do with it ‘till the games? very simple, test it. In fact they will test all their venues before the Olympics start! There will be a series of pre-Games tournaments to test them and they’ve had already started testing the Fengtai Softball Stadium and the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Regatta since august this year!

Some other events that have already been announced:

*Race walking IAAF Race Walking Challenge 2008.04.19-04.20
*Marathon 2008 China Open 2008.04.20
*Athletics China Open 2008.05.22-05.25

One thing’s for sure: this stadium will be the most impressive sports venue you’ve ever seen in your life and China will absolutely make a deep impression on the rest of world during the Beijing Olympics in 2008!

In this second part of the Beijing 2008 building I’m going to give you an update on the water tube (The Beijing national aquatic centre) or as the Chinese so poetically call it ‘水立方’ (which means: ‘where the water stands’) This venue, just like the Bird’s nest, is already almost completed and is an unbelievable building, not only by the looks of it but also because of the amazing technology used in it.

image from wikipedia

The first thing you’ll notice when you’ll see a picture of this venue is of course the many bubbles on it, hence the name ‘the bubble’ or ‘the water tube’. These water bubbles aren’t built on it as simply some decoration though, apart from that these ETFE membranes (The water tube will have about 2800 of them) will be ‘self-cleaning’. Because the surface of these membranes has anti-adhesion properties no dust will be able to get on it and if that doesn’t help there’s another thing called ‘rain’. So no need for washing this huge building every month. There are more interesting functions for these membranes though, because the exterior coat of the structure will be decorated with many white light spots called “galvanizing points”. Their function is to regulate and enhance the luminosity, aesthetic and temperature of the stadium with the help of the sun. Pretty clever thinking of those Chinese if you ask me! The quality and strength of these membranes is also very high, apparently they wouldn’t even be damaged if someone would go and jump on them. If one however would be damaged seriously a new one can be arranged within the following 8 hours, since Beijing has already made facilities that make this new age material.

So how far are they with the construction of it then? Well according to Wu Jingjun, chief engineer of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Project Construction Headquarters Office the main steel structures have been completed, the installation of the membrane structure is in smooth progress, and construction on the walls and the installation of the membrane structure of the outside roof are expected to be finished by the end of this year. The stadium is now completed for 85 to 90%. After it has been finished it will be used for other games and testing, just like they’ll do with all the other venues that have already been completed.

Not only amazing looking but also a technological new age master piece of Chinese soil. It sure makes me speechless and I have a feeling it has the same effect on you and in the end that exactly where China is looking for in their venues for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing; to make a deep impression on the world, to present herself to the world, the new super power..is coming right up!

Sports injury

Pro’s and Con’s of Grass Surfaces

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