Injury Prevention Strategies for Emergency Services Personnel

THE INDUSTRIAL ATHLETE. COULD THIS BE YOU?

I know what you are thinking. What is an “industrial athlete”? Well, you could very well be an industrial athlete. Firefighters, paramedics, nurses, construction workers, mechanics, welders, assembly line workers, trades people and people working in industry are all industrial athletes. Basically, anyone who performs physically demanding work requiring their body to perform exact and/or repetitive body movements, body positions, and manual tasks is considered an industrial athlete.

Why is this important to you? Are you one of these athletes? Have you been injured at work? Have you had therapy for your injury? Most of you would answer yes to all of these questions.

As an industrial athlete, what you may not know is in order to successfully return from a muscle, bone or joint injury, you must be provided with proper stretching and exercise so you can safely return to your job duties. This exercise has to be harder than your job requires. What I mean is, if you have a rotator cuff injury, and you continually lift heavy items at work weighing 6, 8, 10 pounds or more, a 2 or 3 pound weight for exercise is not going to cut it.


Unfortunately, this is a common mistake made by therapy practitioners when dealing with an injury sustained in the workplace. We would never make an athlete work less than what their sport demands of them. If we did, the athlete is at risk for further injury. So why would we do this for the industrial athlete? Truthfully, proper therapy will make you, the patient, stronger than you were prior to the injury. If you were injured at work, odds are you weren’t strong enough to begin with to continually put those stresses and demands on your body, so you need to be stronger than those stresses to prevent re-injury. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Next time you get hurt and require therapy, which all muscle, bone and joint injuries do, ensure your therapist is exceeding the strength demands and physical activity required by your job, or trust me, you will be back!

Darryl Thorvaldson, BA(Kin), PCP, CSCS, CAT(C) is the owner of Active Therapy and Sports Injury Consulting. He is also an Athletic Therapist at Joint Effort Sports Injury Clinic in Winnipeg, Canada.