Too Much Pain, No Gain: Avoid... Video Transcript

Participants

, Jonathan L. Glashow MD, Jim Ramsay , David Folk Thomas

Summary

To maintain a healthy body, exercise is essential. But working out can do more harm than good if you don't prevent injuries. Our panel of experts will discuss how to get the most out of your exercise while keeping your body in one piece.

Webcast Transcript

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Welcome to our webcast. I'm David Folk Thomas. If you don't know yet, we're in the 21st century. So it's time to start exercising the correct way, and the incorrect way is to exercise and give yourself an injury or get an injury. We're going to be talking about injury prevention. How you can avoid injuries whether you're working out weight lifting, whether you're playing tennis, hockey, basketball, any of those activities. Joining me are two experts on the subject.

I've got Jim Ramsay, he's the Athletic Trainer for the New York Rangers hockey team. Sitting next to Jim is Dr. Jonathan Glashow, he's a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He's also a consultant to the New York Rangers, as well as other olympic athletes. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us. Dr. Glashow, can I call you Jonathan?

JONATHAN GLASHOW, MD: Please do.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Let's start out. What are some common injuries that people incur from working out, whether they're doing it the right or wrong way?

JONATHAN GLASHOW, MD: That's a good question. I think I'd like to group them in two ways. There is the overuse kind of injuries that we see which may be known as tendonitis, like a tennis elbow or shoulder tendonitis. Then there's the macro-traumatic injury, when somebody lifts a weight incorrectly and their biceps ruptures or they dislocate their shoulder. Most commonly we see those overuse injuries. People lifting improperly, lifting too much, not resting enough, not stretching, etc. They're the most common. Occasionally we see ruptured muscles, strained muscles, strained ligaments in the knee from improper technique, excessive weight with improper technique. So I think grouped both ways the more common one would be the overuse injuries that we see at the gyms. The hockey club probably sees a few more of the macro-traumatic ones and gross ligament injuries and fractures, and things of that sort.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: The macro-traumatic, that would maybe be when you hear the popping sound or the breaking sound.

JONATHAN GLASHOW, MD: Or you see blood.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Jim, Jonathan alluded to, you work with the Rangers. What kind of injuries do you see with them? More of those intense injuries?

JIM RAMSAY: We do definitely see a lot of more acute type of stuff in terms of the sprains and strains, a strain being a muscle injury and sprain being a ligament injury. We have a lot of knee injuries. Mike Richter, for example, this year sprained his ACL.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Goal tender for the Rangers.

JIM RAMSAY: Excellent goal tender for the Rangers. He had ACL reconstructions. He's doing great. Then we also have a lot of strains, the muscular injury. A lot of players today in hockey are having what we call athletic pubalgia. A big word. Basically, it means that they're injuring or straining the lower oblique muscles in their stomach. Why? We haven't figured that out yet. There are numerous studies. But we do see a lot of major muscle and ligament injuries in hockey.

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: When you're setting out to prevent injuries if you're going to the gym and you have the mindset, "I'm going to do this right," are injury prevention techniques more important for those gradual injuries? What was the big word you used?

JIM RAMSAY: You liked that one?

DAVID FOLK THOMAS: Yes, I liked that word. But it seems like for a hockey team, it's hard to prevent an injury if a guy's smashing into the boards, so to speak. I imagine you can try to build the muscles up enough to negate that.