Lesson video

Hello everyone.

So good to have you with me today for this lesson on sports specific injuries and rice treatment from the physical training injury and injury prevention unit.

My name is Mr. Brim and unfortunately I've suffered some of these injuries in the past and I'm sure if you are very active person as I expect you are, you might have had some of these injuries or you might get them in future.

Hopefully not too many, but it's great to know all about them and perhaps a little bit on how we might treat them if we do get them.

Let's begin, shall we? Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to identify lots of different sporting injuries and suggest how we might treat a soft tissue injury.

Here are five keywords for today's lesson, concussion, fracture, dislocation, sprain and strain, things you'll be getting more familiar with as we go through the lesson.

Now you can see that our lesson will be divided into three different sections today and the first section is called identifying concussion and fractures.

Let's begin with Andeep and he's got some questions for you to get you thinking about injuries.

So what types of sports injuries can you think of and where in the body do they occur? Maybe you've had some of these injuries yourself.

Maybe pause a video here and make a quick list of all the different injuries you can think of.

So there are lots of common sports injuries and they happen to all sorts of parts of our body.

Here are some of those, well the muscles, your bones, your joints, the brain and the skin.

And we're going to look at injuries that occur with all of these at some point in today's lesson.

Lots to cover.

So let's get started.

As Jacob rightly says, ouch, look at that picture of two people clashing heads in a game of rugby.

What injury do you think might occur here? Maybe it was on the list that you just made.

Here's one injury that might occur in this situation because when the head takes a blow like this, it can cause a brain injury known as concussion.

Is that one you've heard of? Now Aisha is asking you, "Which sports do you think concussions can occur in?" Here are a few of the common sports, ice hockey, rugby, both of these are very physical sports with lots of contact.

However, how about this one? Diving, no physical contact in diving at all, but how might they get a concussion diving? Well, if the technique goes wrong, it's quite possible they'll bang their head on the board.

Occasionally in football, as you can see here, this guy's getting an elbow to the head, but occasionally players will clash heads when they go up for a head or two.

Cheerleading might not be one that you thought of straightaway, but they perform all sorts of stunts as you can see the girl at the top there.

And sadly in training especially, it goes wrong and people might get dropped on their heads.

And of course, possibly the number one sport for concussions is boxing where people are getting punched in the head all the time, but there are many more.

In fact, most sports there is some sort of risk that you'll get a concussion, but clearly sports like ice hockey, rugby and boxing are much more prone to the athletes getting concussions.

Now, concussions can be a very serious injury and in recent times there's been a lot more awareness of just how much care we need to take over somebody with a concussion, how do you know if somebody's concussed? Well, the athlete may feel dizzy or sick after this blow to the head that they suffered.

They may even lose some consciousness and they may suffer memory loss.

And it's vital that anybody who has a concussion is given medical help, okay? Which of these are possible symptoms of concussion, A, loss of consciousness, B, dizziness, C, inflammation and D, memory loss.

What can you remember? There were three correct answers there.

Loss of consciousness, dizziness and memory loss.

Inflammation is not one of our symptoms. Well done if you've got all three.

Now, Jacob's back with the same image of the rugby players because perhaps you said a broken nose, which would be very possible in this situation, wouldn't it? Especially the player on the left has got a forehead into his nose, it's being pushed back at force.

That could well break that nose, couldn't it? So when we get a heavy impact with objects, other people as in this case in the rugby or maybe even a fall on the floor and contact with the floor can cause bones to crack.

And this is what we call a fracture.

Here we have an image of a fracture, an X-ray image of a fracture and Sophia's got a quick retrieval task for you, but whether you can remember the name of the bone that's been fractured in this X-ray image, it's the ulnar.

Okay, the ulnar, we can tell because it's over there by the little finger, so it's on that side of the arm, not the thumb side of the arm, which would be the radius.

Now fractured bones might be cracked or snap completely and sometimes they snap and then break through the skin as well.

It could be quite a nasty injury, but there is a different type of fracture, still a fracture in the bone, but we call them stress fractures and they're not caused by that one-off impact with something, but instead they're caused by repetitive stress on the bone and therefore they're classed as an overuse injury because they occur over time.

Here's some more X-ray images of fractures.

Now the most severe fractures can lead to the body part being misshapen.

In this case those bones have got clean breaks all the way through, haven't they? And so, that lower arm might not hold its position as it normally would.

This is because the bone won't be unable to support and provide structure and certainly in this case wouldn't be able to bear any weight.

You wouldn't be lifting anything without hand or trying to use that arm to push on the floor to perhaps lift you up or something similar.

Now, fractures can cause intense pain, especially to begin with, which will mean the movement is limited or not possible at all while you you're recovering.

I'm sure you've seen somebody, you might have had one of these yourself, a cast over the fractured limb while you recover and it can take six weeks or more to heal a fractured bone.

Depending on the severity of the fracture, treatment may be required.

It may even include having surgery or something or some sort of plate attached to your bone while the fracture heals.

True or false, all fractures are caused by the bone coming into contact with a person object or the floor.

That's false.

Many fractures are caused in this way, however, not all of them because if you remember we also have a different type of fracture called stress fractures and they're caused by repetitive stress to the bone over a period of time.

Here's a practise task for you, I want you to imagine this scenario.

Two basketball players clashed heads and then fell awkwardly when competing for the ball.

One of them is now holding their head and looking dazed and the other is holding their arm, which doesn't look normal to you.

Which injury do you suspect has happened to each player and what symptoms could you look for to help confirm that you are correct? I'd like you to name two symptoms for each injury.

Basis on the content of the lesson we've looked at so far.

Pause the video here and I'll be back in a moment with some suggested answers.

Which injury do you suspect has happened to each player and what symptoms could you look for to help confirm you are correct? Let's begin with the player who's holding their head and they were looking dazed, weren't they? Do you remember? And so as they clashed heads with somebody else and there's been an impact on the skull or on cranium, you might suspect that there's a concussion, a brain injury.

Symptoms you might check for, are they dizzy? Are they feeling nauseous? Have they got loss of memory or a loss of consciousness? These are all signs that the concussion, this is the right answer.

How about the player holding their arm? Now the awkward landing that they had might have led to their arm being fractured.

If they fell awkwardly and put their arm down on the floor, it could have caused such an impact that the player's arm became fractured.

Things you want to check for, these are the symptoms, the arm being misshapen, possibly, if it's a really bad fracture, there may even be bone protruding from the skin.

They'll be unable to move that arm or to bear weight on the arm and they'll probably be in intense pain if they have fractured their arm.

Well done if you recognise both concussion and fracture might be the injuries that we're looking at here and two of the symptoms for each.

That brings us onto part two of our lesson, which is identifying joint and soft tissue injuries.

Here we have a boy who's fallen off his bike.

Now a very common injury happens when friction between the skin and a rough surface like the road causes abrasions.

Abrasions are often caused by tripping or falling onto rough surfaces such as a road or an artificial pitch.

Lucas notes that you might have called it a graze before but from today in GCSE, we're going to call it an abrasion, but it is commonly called a graze as well.

Now most abrasions can be treated by applying some sterile wipe and using an antiseptic cream and that'll help us to avoid infections.

Compressing the area might also be needed if you need to stop the bleeding.

Now abrasions heal quite quickly.

In general, it might be a week or so before they disappear.

Now here we have another picture of somebody who's feeling an injury.

It's not an abrasion this one, but they're holding the back of their hamstring and it's a football player.

Now what they're suffering with here is a strain.

Now a strain is a muscular injury which occurs when a muscle is overstretched or torn.

Hamstring muscle strains are particularly common, particularly in football as our image shows there.

Footballers often have tight hamstrings and the actions that are performed during a football game often lead them to overstretch while they reach for the ball or they do a slide tackle that can often lead to that overstretching or tearing of the hamstring.

Now RICE treatment is required for a strain and this is something we're going to look at in the third part of today's lesson.

So just hold tight on that one.

Sam's here to remind us that lots of people would call this a pulled muscle.

I pulled my hamstring for example, but from now on you are going to refer to it as a strain 'cause that's the important phrase to use in GCSE.

Let's check for your understanding.

Which of these facilities might you pay particular attention to the risk of abrasions A, the artificial football pitch, B, a swimming pool or C, a BMN track.

The answers were because there was two correct answers, hopefully you spotted that.

A and C, the way artificial pitches are constructed means that they're quite rough surfaces to fall on, particularly the really old fashioned sand based artificial pictures.

If you fell on one of those, you are almost certainly going to get an abrasion.

And the concrete rough surface of the BMX track is also something that's likely to cause an abrasion if you fall.

And it's no wonder that for those BMX riders, they're wearing a lot of protective equipment there, aren't they? To ensure that if they do fall, it reduces the chance of them getting injuries.

A swimming pool is not somewhere you're particularly risk getting an abrasion, but of course it is.

Now joints in particular are susceptible to numerous types of injury in sport.

John's asking you, "Can you remember the different connective tissues found around joints there?" We have an anatomical image, a cross section of a joint.

What are all those different connective tissues within that joint? Maybe pause a video here and recap all those different tissues you can see there in that image.

So here's three of the key tissues that we're looking at, there we have them we attaching the patella to the quadricep muscle, a tendon, a tendon between a muscle and a bone.

Now between those two bones, the tibia and the femur, we have cartilage which acts as a buffer between the bones and the final tissue.

We can see there, hopefully you can notice that that attaches the tibia to the patella.

So that's two bones.

There's no muscle involved there.

This is a tissue linking bone to bone and that hopefully you remember it's a ligament attaching the bone to the bone.

Well done if you remembered those.

Ouch, have you ever done that? I certainly have.

A sprain is a joint injury in which the ligament is damaged.

Remember, ligaments are bone to bone.

They occur when the ligament is overstretched or possibly torn.

Like in this image here, that ligament on the outside of the ankle is going to be overstretched because that's an unnatural position for it to be put into.

Sprains are very common in sport in particular at the ankle joint as you can see here in certain sports, especially like basketball where people jump and then land, but they haven't landed quite right on their feet and the ankle is overstretched.

But you can also get sprains at well any joint which has ligaments, which means things like the wrist, the knee, the elbow, the fingers, even lots of them get sprained during sport.

And again, RICE treatment is required if you have a sprain.

And that's again something we're going to come onto later in today's lesson.

Now there's a few things which might cause sprains in sport.

Let's have a look at them.

So playing on a pore surface, one with potholes in.

I know I sprain my ankle when I was younger by putting my foot down on the floor, but it wasn't even.

And it twisted my ankle because of the unevenness of the football pitch it was.

And as a result, I had a sprained ankle.

You might fall or twist awkwardly, which could lead to a sprain and colliding with somebody else as these two softball players have, can cause joints to be overstretched because you are forced into positions that you wouldn't normally be in and therefore the ligaments get overstretched or possibly even torn.

Now Sam has a reminder here for you to be careful not to confuse sprains, which are ligament injuries and strains, which are muscular injuries.

They sound so similar, don't they, with just one letter different and it's very easy to confuse them.

I wonder if you can come up with a way to remember sprains and strains.

If you do, I'd love you to tell me what it is.

Is this true or false? A sprain is an injury to a tendon at a joint.

That's false.

And why is that? Hopefully you noticed that because we said it was a sprain, it was a ligament injury and a ligament injury due to overstretching or tearing.

So again, it's really important to remember the difference between tendons, bone to muscle and ligaments, bone to bone, and of course the difference between sprains and strains.

Okay, now I've chosen these two images carefully because in these sports performance often have the same type of soft tissue injury or joint injury.

And that's because in these sports people perform the same action over and over again.

And that repetitive use of the tendons at the elbow joint for both of those sports become painful and inflamed.

And this is what we call golfer's elbow and tennis elbow.

Okay, two overuse injuries at the tendons due to repetitive use.

Izzy's got a quick question for you because golfer's elbow and tennis elbow are similar but also slightly different.

So she's asking you, do you know what is similar about these two injuries and also what is slightly different? I wonder if you know the differences between golfer's elbow and tennis elbow.

Let's have a look and give an answer to what Izzy just asked you.

So here we have two elbows.

Now with the golfer's elbow, the action of swinging your golf club means that it's the tendons on the inside of the arm that become inflamed.

With tennis elbow, it's the tendons on the outside of the elbow that become inflamed.

So the very, very similar injuries in how they feel, but they're just in slightly different locations and different tendons within the elbow on the inside or the outside, depending on the action that you're performing.

Well done if you knew that already, fantastic.

If you didn't, well, now you do.

Let's have a look at that cartilage, that buffer between two bones.

Now cartilage can become torn and then it's damaged and that's by often sudden twisting motions.

Have you ever heard of a footballer getting their studs caught into the grass but then their knee twists but the lower leg doesn't twist with it because the studs are in the grass.

That could likely be a cause of cartilage damage or torn cartilage.

It can also be damaged by wear and tear over time, acting as that buffer between bones over years and years and years.

Particularly if they're well used knees, that's gonna cause damage over time, some wear and tear.

Now with cartilage injuries, if it's serious enough, sometimes surgery is required.

The thing about cartilages, it doesn't have its own blood supply and that means it doesn't heal like a muscle or a tendon might.

And here's a lovely image.

What's happened to that little finger on the hand? Something called dislocation.

And that's when the bones that meet at a joint are dislodged or dis displaced from their normal position.

That's certainly not a normal looking little finger, is it? That's often caused by forceful impact or a twisting of the joint.

And common dislocations occur in fingers, thumbs, shoulders, and elbows.

Okay, which of these are injuries which occur to connective tissues in the joints? Is it A dislocation, B sprain C, fracture or D, torn cartilage? Which of those are connective tissue injuries? Hopefully you saw that there were three there.

Dislocation, sprains and torn cartilage.

All involve connective tissues.

Fractures are related to bones.

They are a bone injury, not a connective tissue injury.

Well done if you've got all three.

And here's your practise task for this section on identifying joint and soft tissue injuries.

So using your understanding of joint and soft tissue injuries, do your best to diagnose these three injuries and include a justification for each.

Sophia says, I overstretched for the ball in football and now the back of my upper leg is very sore.

Aisha says for the last few weeks, my elbow has been really sore after tennis practise.

And Jacob says I fell from the beam and landed awkwardly.

Now my shoulder looks weird and hurts a lot.

What would you diagnose those three injuries as and include a justification as to why you thought so? Pause the video here and I'll be back in a moment with some ideas of what has happened to Sophia, Aisha and Jacob.

Okay, so Sophia, overstretched for the ball in football.

Now the back of her leg is very sore, the upper leg, what might you have said here? Sophia's probably strained a muscle.

It's the back of the upper leg.

It's not a joint, it's the leg itself.

And so, more likely to be a muscular injury than a connective tissue injury.

So a strain 'cause strains are related to muscles, aren't they? She's not complaining of pain at a joint, but the back of her upper leg.

So we're gonna rule out the other soft tissue injuries.

Now the location of the muscle, the back of the upper leg suggests that this is a strained hamstring, a very common injury in football.

And now looks like Sophia's added to the list of people who have suffered one.

How about Aisha's injury? For the last few weeks, my elbow has been really sore after tennis practise.

Now there's a few big clues there.

You might have said this is an ongoing recurring injury.

She said it keeps happening after tennis practise, that would suggest an overuse injury.

She says that tennis practise is the cause of the pain and it's in her elbow.

And so tennis plus elbow, the likeliest diagnosis would be tennis elbow.

Well done if you said that.

How about Jacob? Jacob fell from the beam and landed awkwardly.

Now his shoulder looks weird and hurts a lot.

So these are joint and soft tissue injuries.

Remember Jacob has a joint injury caused by impact and possibly twisting.

We don't quite know how he landed, but it could have twisted as he landed.

That could be a sprain with the shoulder ligaments overstretched or torn, perhaps more likely though is a dislocation.

'Cause Jacob said it looks weird.

It's likely that perhaps the shoulder has moved out of its joint.

With a sprain, it probably wouldn't look any different.

It would just be painful.

But with a dislocation, it very likely will look a little bit strange because the ball is not inside the socket anymore and it would look unusual.

Really well done if you identified those three injuries and included a justification for each, great work.

Onto our third section of today's lesson, and this is using rice treatment for soft tissue injuries.

I promised a couple of times we will come onto this and now we have, so when treating a soft tissue injury such as a sprain or a strain, we use the RICE acronym to help us remember how.

Andeep asks you, have you ever heard of this before? What do you think the letters in RICE stand for? Now I'm going to tell you in a moment, but perhaps pause here and just think for a moment, what might RICE stand for in the RICE acronym? The R stands for rest, okay? Quite simply stop using the injured body part.

Don't try and keep playing hope and it's going to go away because it won't, and chances are you'll make it worse.

We also use the word immobilise it.

So stop using it, stop moving it.

And that's to avoid injuring it further as I said.

What about the next letter, I? Well I stands for ice, apply ice to the injury for at least 10 minutes, okay? You can get specialist ice packs like the one you can see in the image, or you can get those ones that you break inside and it turns cold.

Or you could even use a bag of frozen peas, but it's never a good idea to directly apply ice to the skin because you may get a skin burn.

And so make sure that there is something between your skin and the ice.

But apply ice and this will help reduce any swelling and inflammation and may even help to reduce any pain that you have.

Third letter C is for compression.

So after you've finished applying the ice, you're then going to compress the area, compress the injured area with a bandage or some sort of support.

You can see this person here on the image has a specialist wrist support, can't you? And you can buy those, but otherwise you might just use a normal bandage.

This will also help to reduce the swelling.

And finally, the E in rice is for elevation, as the image suggests if you have a foot injury or an ankle injury, you get to put your feet up, alright? The idea being that you elevate the injured area above the heart.

If it's an injured wrist, you would hold it up perhaps like I am right now above the heart, alright? Now, by doing that, you'll decrease the blood supply to the injured part and this will also help to reduce the swelling, okay? Let's check for understanding.

First of all, what is the correct use of the acronym, RICE.

What do the four letters stand for? Is it A, recovery, ice, compression, elevation? Is it B, rest, ice, comfort, elevation, or is it C, rest, ice, compression, elevation? Yes, well done if you said C, rest, ice, compression, elevation.

I really hope everybody got that one.

And secondly, which of these injuries would require RICE treatment? Remember, only certain injuries require RICE.

We can't just use it for all the different types of injury that we've discussed today.

Is it A, fracture, B sprain, or C abrasion? And again, I hope everybody got this.

It's B, sprain.

Fractures and abrasions wouldn't be treated by RICE treatment, but sprain certainly would.

Sprains are a soft tissue injury which need RICE treatment.

Well done if you said B.

Okay, your practise task for our section on using RICE treatment for soft tissue injuries is to complete the following paragraph and fill in all the missing words.

Pause your video here, complete that task, and I'll be back with the answers in a moment.

Okay, so the paragraph should read like this, read it, read yours along with me, and hopefully you've got all the correct words.

So when somebody suffers a soft tissue injury, the first action they should take is to rest.

They must immobilise the injured part to avoid injuring it further.

Secondly, they should apply ice to help reduce swelling.

Thirdly, the injured part should be compressed, which also helps to reduce swelling.

And finally, elevating the injured part above the heart will reduce the blood supply and also help reduce swelling.

Lots of blanks in that last sentence, wasn't that? Okay, well done if you got all of those correct.

Hopefully you got most of them, if not all.

If not, maybe it's maybe you need to go back over this section and have another look.

Let's take a look at our summary for today's lesson.

And then we were looking at sports specific injuries and RICE treatment.

Now, sports specific injuries occur in numerous ways affecting different parts of the body.

We've looked at all sorts of injuries today, haven't we, that affect different parts of the body.

Injuries in sport include concussions, fractures, abrasions and strains, or damage occurring to connective tissues around joints might result in sprains or dislocation.

Repetitive actions can inflame tendons, as is the case with overuse injuries called golfer's elbow and tennis elbow.

RICE treatment stands for rest, ice, compression and elevation and should be applied to soft tissue injuries.

Now, I hope that you go through your sporting career without too many of these injuries, but chances are we'll all get one or two of them at some stage.

So now you might have a better understanding of what's happening to you, how you might treat it, and how long it might take before your back playing your sport or your physical activity.

And in particular, if you get a soft tissue injury, you'll now know exactly how to treat it with the RICE treatment method.

So make sure you put that new knowledge into action.

Thanks for joining me today's lesson on Sport Specific Injuries and RICE Treatment.

I'll see you next time.