Over 90% of students at Benilde St-Margarets participate in sports-related activities throughout the school year. Athletes are constantly striving for peak performance in their sports and activities. These athletes have many ups and downs throughout their seasons and many include injuries. Physical therapy is a key tool for athletes on their journey to recovery. Physical therapy also includes many exercises, techniques, and workouts to help prevent re-injury in the future. Physical therapists specialize in shaping these exercises to the athlete’s particular goals for the future.
Managing injuries and maintaining your mental well-being in high school can be a struggle for some athletes. “[My injury] happened at the beginning of my high school experience. I was pretty new to the hockey panel, it was just a lot to manage on top of friends and still wanting to be incorporated into the hockey program. Specifically for me, that’s the sport I played. It was big trying to find new friends and finding a balance between a new school system,” junior Ruby Ryan said.
Injuries can impact a student’s high school experience negatively, while it can also be mentally and physically draining. “In the span of about two years, I had three knee surgeries and throughout the course of those I had other injuries that led up to those, so I was in physical therapy for three and a half years,” junior Ruby Ryan said.
Injured athletes are counting down the days to be back on the field again, even if that means doing physical therapy three to four times a day. “You should do physical therapy, and you should definitely do it routinely. Follow their instructions because you only benefit from it if you take advantage of it,” Ryan said.
Even those athletes who may have done physical therapy for a short amount of time felt tremendous improvement within a brief time period “Within the first week, I felt [improvement] because I knew I had strength not only [in] my back but other parts of my body, so I could feel [improvemnt] right away,” sophomore Harper Stevenson-Shimek said.
Physical therapy is extremely important for other athletes to improve the recovery process even if the athlete may have a minor injury. There are also many minor things an athlete can do in a day to prevent such injuries “I didn’t stretch enough. There were lots of components and it all just ended up happening…physical therapy is very important. Even now, I sometimes do physical therapy. I have muscle problems in my back so I have to do some stretches,” Stevenson-Shimek said.
The athletes who have been injured stress the importance of physical therapy in their daily lives. Physical therapy should be one of the first options athletes should go to when they are injured. “If you replace physical therapy with your sport while you’re injured, and you dedicate yourself to it, it definitely helps,” Ryan said.