Two Types of Sports Injuries

In this context I will treat injuries seperate from sicknesses. When I
say injury I mean something that prevents an athlete from training and
competing because of a temporary (hopefully temporary) disability. In
general there are only two types of injuries: overuse and traumatic.

Overuse injuries are injuries that an athlete aquires because they do
something improperly over and over again. That is to say if your foot
hits the ground at just a fraction of a degree away from perfect if
you run too much without doing supplementary training you will get
injured. Most runners who progress through the years will aquire
several of these as they learn how to take care of their body and
learn better form. Common overuse injuries include IT-band syndrome,
runner's knee, plantar fasciitis, shin splints, and in some cases
stress fractures. In a future article I will discuss some prevention
and recovery methods.

Second there are traumatic injuries. Simply put these are the injuries
that those nearby can hear and see happen. The athlete is fine one
second and in pain the next. Common injuries include: broken bones,
sprained and twisted joints, pulled muscles, bruises, and concussions.

Step one (often passed in a fraction of a second by experienced sports
medicine people) in determining recovery from an injury is determining
if it was overuse or traumatic.