Lesson video

Hello there, and welcome to this lesson on PAR-Qs and injury prevention.

This is from the Physical Training: Injury and Injury Prevention Unit.

My name is Mr. Broome.

I'm really happy to have you with me today.

Now, I expect you are the kind of person who enjoys playing sport or physical activity, and I also expect you're the kind of person who'd prefer not to get injured, so this lesson is definitely a useful one for you.

So by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to identify and explain how to use something called a PAR-Q, and also a range of injury preventative measures.

And here are our keywords for today.

There are four.

They are injury, PAR-Q, protective clothing or equipment, and overuse injury.

Have a little look at those.

Since we've got an awful lot to cover today, let's begin by looking at how we use a PAR-Q to assess readiness for exercise.

So I wonder if you've ever heard of a PAR-Q, or ever maybe even done one yourself.

Prior to beginning a new training programme or increasing the amount of activity, people should check they are suitably ready by completing a self-assessment, and this is something a gym or a health centre or a personal trainer might give to somebody before they plan their programme, and this is called a Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, or as you may see via those purple letters that are highlighted, a PAR-Q.

So a PAR-Q asks everybody a series of questions designed to highlight any personal health risks associated with exercise.

So let's look at some of the questions it might ask you.

So it asks you things like do you feel pain in your chest when you do physical activity, and do you lose your balance because of dizziness, or do you ever lose consciousness? These are all things that might be a concern for somebody who's about to start or increase the amount of exercise that they're doing.

So Izzy has a question.

I wonder what you think is the answer to this.

If you answer yes to the questions like those we've just seen, does that mean you can't do any exercise? What do you think? Well, if you do answer yes to any of the questions on a PAR-Q, it should prompt the person who completed it to get further medical advice before they start exercising or increasing the amount of exercise they're doing.

Now, the doctor might then recommend a certain type of exercise or a certain amount of exercise based on the PAR-Q and any follow-up conversations that you have with 'em.

If you answer no to all of them, it means you can be reasonably sure you can exercise safely.

Let's check for your understanding.

Do you remember what PAR-Q stands for? Is it A, a Physical Assessment Readiness Questionnaire, is it B, a Personal Activity Readiness Questionnaire, C, a Physical Activity Readiness Quiz, or D, a Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire? Well done if you said D.

It's a Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire.

And a second question.

Answering yes to any of the questions in a PAR-Q should prompt the person to seek more medical advice.

Is that true or false? That's true.

And why is that? Well, answering yes to any of those questions indicates that there may be something of concern, which will impact the amount or type of exercise a person should participate in.

So a doctor or a medical professional will be able to give further advice before you undertake something which may be dangerous.

Here's your practise task on PAR-Qs and using them to assess readiness for exercise.

Now, it's a great idea to try to complete the PAR-Q questions for yourself, and so you are going to get the first six of the seven questions, but then I'd like you to write a paragraph to explain why you believe it's so important to ask these screening questions before somebody begins a training programme.

Why do we go through the process of asking people to complete it? So here's the first six questions.

I'm just going to put them up on the screen.

Okay, have a read of those, and say quite simply yes or no, but importantly then, have a look at those questions and think why is it so important that we ask these screening questions to somebody who wants to start a training programme or increase the amount of exercise they're doing.

Pause the video here, and I'll return in a moment with some answers for you.

So just a reminder to you that if you did answer any of the questions with a yes, you should share your PAR-Q with a doctor.

If you answered no to all of the questions, you can be reasonably sure that you can exercise safely.

But how about your paragraph about the importance of these questions? So things you might have said in your paragraph.

That by screening for conditions like heart disease, joint problems, or other medical issues, it ensures that the individual is safe to exercise.

This means we're going to help prevent injuries and other complications, and allow the exercise professional, like a personal trainer, to tailor programmes to the individual's needs.

So the PAR-Q is providing what we call a safeguard for both the participant and the trainer.

It ensures that the person is as safe as we can possibly be before they begin their exercise.

Well done if your answer reflected the importance of screening somebody and ensuring that they're going to be safe before they exercise.

That brings us onto part two of our lesson, planning training to reduce overuse injuries.

Now, look, injury means physical harm or damage to the body.

And if you are involved in sport, as I said earlier, almost all of us are going to experience an injury at some time, and all sports and physical activities carry some risk of injury for the performer.

But there are a number of measures which can be taken to prevent them from happening.

We don't want them to happen.

They will, at times, but we can try and prevent them as much as possible.

Now, we have something called overuse injuries, and they occur when a muscle or joint is used repetitively over time, and the stress on that joint or on that muscle causes an injury.

In particular, the ligaments and tendons around a joint are susceptible, but overuse injuries can occur elsewhere, such as in muscles.

Izzy's back with a question.

Have you ever heard of runner's knee, and where do you think this name comes from? Is that something you've heard of? Runner's knee is an overuse injury whereby somebody who runs a lot, puts lots of miles in, runs on hard surfaces, maybe training for a marathon or even further, their knee or the tendons around their knee, particularly, become inflamed because they're being stressed so often and so much, and it causes them to have pain in that joint, and perhaps maybe even have to stop running for a little while or reduce how much running they're doing.

This is called runner's knee because it's common in people who do long distance running, but actually lots of activities which involve running could cause the same injury.

So one of the most important measures to prevent overuse injuries is to check that your exercise plan carefully considers the principles of training.

Now, Lucas wants to ask you, do you remember the seven principles of training? Maybe pause the video here, and see if you can either remember them, or maybe even write them down.

So our seven principles of training are: individual needs, specificity, progressive overload, FITT, rest and recovery, overtraining, and reversibility.

I wonder how many of those seven you remembered.

Hopefully, all of them.

So Lucas's second question for you is which will be the most important to consider for injury prevention? Again, maybe pause the video here and have a think.

Which of those seven do you think would be most important to think about if we want to make sure that the persons is not getting an overuse injury? Here's the first one.

I wonder if this is something that you said.

Progressive overload.

That means we gradually increase the amount of overload, so that the fitness gains occur, but without the potential for injury.

And the second principle of training that's really important to avoid overuse injuries is rest and recovery.

Ensuring that enough periods of rest are included in a training plan for the body to have enough time to recover and avoid overtraining.

Those are two of the most important principles of training to reduce the chances of getting an overuse injury.

Is this one true or false? A little check for your understanding.

Tennis players often suffer from overuse injuries at the elbow due to repetitively striking the ball.

True or false? That's true.

This is a very common injury with people in racket sports.

Why? Well, the repetitive action in training and games can cause pain and swelling in their elbow.

Golfers also get a similar issue with their elbows.

If you think about a tennis player when they're training and playing, they only use one arm, and that arm is constantly striking the ball every few seconds when they're in a rally.

That repetitive stress and strain can cause overuse injuries.

Another check for your understanding.

In order to reduce the chance of getting an overuse injury, we should A, avoid contact sports such as boxing or rugby, B, plan sufficient rest periods to allow for recovery, C, ensure we are progressively overloading the body and not doing too much too soon, or D, ensure we are overtraining.

If you spotted that there were two correct answers there, well done.

Yes, we should always plan sufficient rest periods to allow for recovery.

We don't want to be stressing out the muscles every single day.

Ensure we are progressively overloading the body and not doing too much too soon is another way of ensuring that we don't stress the muscle too much or stress the joint too much to get an overuse injury.

Well done if you said those two, B and C.

Here's your practise task for our unit on planning training to reduce overuse injuries.

And so imagine here we have this javelin thrower, and a javelin thrower has a competition in three months time, and they really want to win it.

Maybe it's something like the Olympics.

Now, the javelin thrower tells you that they're going to double their training load and train every day until the competition because that is how they'll make sure they win, or at least that's what they think.

How will you respond to the javelin thrower? This is what I'd like you to do.

Write one concern you might have about their new training plan.

Hopefully, when you saw what they plan to do, alarm bells started ringing a little bit, and you thought "No, they shouldn't do that." So what is your concern? And then number two, write two things you would advise them to do in the next three months.

Pause the video here, complete your answers, and I'll see you in a moment with some suggested answers.

Okay, so our javelin thrower, what might you have said? Well, first of all, we asked you to tell us a concern with their training programme.

Here's something you might have said.

That the very quick increase in training load may well result in overuse injuries.

This is likely to happen at the shoulder or elbow joints.

If they're using them every day, like she said she was going to, it's gonna cause a lot of stress on those shoulder and elbow joints, and injuries are likely to occur.

It's a very quick increase in training load, wasn't it? She's going to double her training load.

You might have told them that your plan might lead to you missing the competition.

It seems like it's a really important competition to them.

Now, if they get an injury because of the misguided belief that having doubled their training load will help them to win the competition, it actually might lead to them missing it through injury.

What advice would you give to the javelin thrower? You might have said that they should make sure their overload is progressive, and training load increases gradually.

Not just double it tomorrow immediately, but progressively increase how much they're training.

You might have said that training every day is too much, and it will lead to an injury, and that they should make sure they have rest days, or you might have said something about needing to factor in plenty of rest and recovery into their training plan, and not just train.

More is not always better.

Well done if you raised your concerns and gave some accurate advice to the javelin thrower, which will mean that perhaps they have a better chance now of winning that competition in three months time.

Onto the third part of today's lesson called reducing the risk of injury during participation.

Now, all sports carry some risk of injury, but there are several measures we can take to reduce that risk and prevent them happening during the activity.

This is the important word there, during.

Laura asks, what is done in your favourite sports to keep the performers safe and reduce the risk of injury? If you are watching this lesson, I'm sure you play sport of some sort or some sort of physical activity.

So what are you and the people you'd participate with doing to keep yourself safe in your sport? This could be something you have a conversation with, somebody who's nearby, and you might want to pause the video here while you think about that.

Here are some of the ways that physical activity in sport are managed in order to try and reduce the risk of injury.

We have age categories, something you may well be familiar with and involved in.

So in youth sport, in particular, age categories are often used to ensure participants of similar age and size compete against each other.

It's particularly important in sports which involve physical contact, like rugby in our picture there.

For example, there may be a rugby team for each of the different year groups in a school.

You might have a year nine rugby team, or an under 16 rugby team, to try and ensure that people are around the same age when they compete against each other.

How about in boxing? I use this image because boxing has a particular way of categorising its competitors, their weight categories.

So many combat sports, such as boxing, will use weight category method to ensure the match is fought between two similar-sized athletes.

An unfair mismatch in size could easily lead to more injuries.

So we have in boxing, for example, lightweight and heavyweight boxers.

If a heavyweight fought a lightweight, their much bigger size would probably mean that the fight would lead to injuries to the lightweight.

How about this guy doing his incredible trick there on his skateboard in what could be an unsafe environment.

There seems to be a lot of concrete and sharp edges there.

Ensuring you have enough experience and the physical capabilities to attempt some new skills will reduce the risk of injury.

This guy's clearly experienced.

He's worked up to that.

He's probably been doing this for years.

So trying to do something too advanced too quickly may well lead to injury.

And so absolutely, by all means, push yourself to try something new, but perhaps not too advanced too soon.

In the combat sports or martial arts, such as judo and taekwondo, they have coloured belts, which represents how experienced and how skilled you are, and people with the same belt will compete against each other.

People of similar skill and experience will be participating against each other, not somebody who's really experienced against a beginner, which may cause injury.

A quick check for your understanding.

Which of the following are methods to reduce the risk of injury? Is it A, matching fighters in boxing according to weight, B, making sure tasks are suitable to the experience of the athlete, C, encouraging athletes to try skills beyond their capabilities, or D, using age categories for competition in youth sport? Right, there were three correct answers there.

Hopefully, you spotted that.

A, B, and D were correct.

So boxers are matched according to their weight, tasks are only given that are suitable to the experience of the athlete, are not too difficult or too dangerous, and using age categories, such as under 16 or year eight, for competition in youth sport.

Here, we see a picture of two people playing cricket, and Jun's question is what can you see these cricket players wearing which will help them avoid injury? Have a quick look at that picture.

Maybe pause the video and see all the different items of clothing you can see that help to reduce the chance of an injury.

So we can see both players, in fact, are wearing a helmet, and gloves, arm pads on the batter, leg pads on the batter.

Okay, so lots of padding going on there, and rightly so because that cricket ball that's approaching the batter is really hard, and it's thrown at quite a fast pace.

So without the padding, there's a big risk of injury.

Okay, so protective clothing and equipment is vital to reduce the risk of injuries, particularly in high-risk sports like cricket, where hard objects are flying around at fast pace.

Now, in most cases, this protective clothing absorbs the impact of hitting the ground, or maybe a hard object like a cricket ball, or maybe even other people like in American football.

Laura's question to you, and you might want to pause here and chat to somebody who's nearby about this, what protective equipment do you wear when playing your favourite sports or physical activities? Check for your understanding.

What cause of injury does protective equipment like a helmet or padding, as we've seen in the cricket example, reduce the risk of? Is it A, injuries caused by impacts with an object or person, B, injuries caused by overtraining, C, injuries caused by not warming up properly, or D, injuries caused by a poor training plan.

Well done if you noted that it was A.

So the helmet and the padding will reduce the injuries caused by an impact with an object or a person.

Okay, so there are many examples of protective equipment and clothing used in different sports and physical activities.

When you answered Laura's question, you'll have said some of your own from your own sports or physical activities.

Let's have a little look at some examples that you might be able to use in future when you're asked to give examples.

So here, we have some people involved in wheelchair racing, and they're wearing helmets and gloves.

Somebody who goes ice skating may choose to wear knee pads in case they fall on the hard ice.

And a common piece of protective equipment that lots of people have are shin pads that you wear when you're playing football to avoid being kicked on the shin, which would be rather painful.

So let's check for your understanding of this.

Which of the following are protective equipment used in some sports to prevent injuries? A, a helmet, B, a gum shield, or C, socks? You might have thought that was quite an easy one.

A helmet and a gum shield are worn in a number of sports to protect the people who are playing.

Socks are required in lots of sports, but they're not a protective equipment.

Let's have a look at a different aspect of how we can reduce the risk of injury during participation, and this is that every sport has its own rules, and some of these rules are created to help prevent injury during the game.

Okay, the rules exist to help keep people safe.

Not all of them, but some of them do, and players are expected to follow the rules.

If you're going to participate in a sport, you follow the rules of that sport.

Here's an example from hockey.

So in the rule book of hockey, it states that players must not play the ball dangerously or in a way which leads to dangerous play.

The keyword there being dangerous, isn't it? Possibly going to cause injury if somebody plays in a dangerous way.

Now, most sports, especially games like hockey, have officials or referees or umpires to monitor whether the game is being played to the rules and that participants are safe.

It's a key role of the referee and rugby perhaps to make sure that the players are safe.

Not just to make sure that the rules are kept to, but to make sure that the players are safe.

Aisha's question, what happens to players who don't follow the rules and perhaps create an unsafe environment for the people who are playing? Well, in many sports, if you are a rule breaker, you'll be warned by the officials, or you may be even excluded.

In football, you get a red card if you are repeatedly making the game unsafe for others, and you'll be excluded from playing any further part in the game.

Let's check for your understanding.

Now, here are three rules from rugby league, from the laws of rugby league, and I want you to consider which of them have been included to keep players safe and to help prevent injuries from happening in rugby league.

A, a player is guilty of misconduct if they make contact with the head or neck of an opponent intentionally, recklessly, or carelessly when tackling, B, rule B states a player shall not wear anything that might prove dangerous to other players, and rule C states a player is guilty of misconduct if they use a shoulder charge on an opponent.

Those are three rules from rugby league.

Which are there to help prevent injuries and keep people safe? Well, actually all three of them, and hopefully you spotted that all three of them are rules which are there to make sure that people stay safe.

Okay, to reduce the danger of somebody getting injured.

Well done if you said that all three of them were the correct answer.

Now, here are some examples of people participating in sport or physical activity, and for your practise task, I want you to look carefully first at the three pictures, and for each picture, I want you to identify a risk of injury to the performers.

What is perhaps an obvious risk of injury in the image that you have in front of you? And then I'd like you to suggest a way in which the risk of the injury could be reduced.

Okay, each picture has something that's I would say fairly obviously a risk of injury, and how would we then deal with that to reduce the chance of that injury happening? This is where you pause the video and write your answers, and I'll return in a moment with some of the suggested answers.

Okay, so let's take the hockey image first.

What's a risk of injury to the performer here? Well, hopefully, you noted that one of the players is not wearing shin pads as they should be in a game of hockey.

One is, and one isn't.

That means that there's a risk that one of the players may get hit directly on the shin by the hard stick or the hard ball.

How could we reduce the chance of that injury? The players should be made to wear shin pads to reduce the risk of injury.

I'm surprised they already haven't been told to wear shin pads.

How about in the football image? What was the risk of injury to the performer here? Well, the player in the blue shirt there is clearly committing a foul on the player in the black shirt.

This type of contact is not allowed in football, and using the elbow like that could clearly result in a facial injury.

How could we reduce the risk of injury? Well, in football, we have a referee, and the referee should award a foul for that action and warn the player in blue.

The referee may even punish that player in blue with a card, a yellow card or a red card, to make sure that everybody else involved is aware that this kind of contact between players is unacceptable, and it's against the laws of the game.

Hopefully, that will mean that the chance of that kind of contact happening again in the game is reduced greatly.

And how about the skateboarder? So the risk of injury to the performer here, hopefully, you agree with me, you may have come up with something different, but that the skateboarder falling off the board could result in many different injuries, possibly a fracture depending on how they land.

How could we reduce the chance of that injury happening? Well, the skateboarder could wear a helmet on their head and pads on their elbows and knees, which will help reduce the impact if they do fall on what looks like a very hard surface.

So well done if you recognised some of the risks that were potentially going to cause injury in those pictures, and a correct way of potentially reducing that risk of injury.

Well done.

Let's move on, shall we, to the fourth and final part of our lesson today, which is about checking the equipment and facilities are safe to use.

Here we have Sam, and Sam has a question for you, and that question is, well, all physical activities take place in some sort of venue or facility, and almost all of them use equipment.

So what risks can you think of that come with facilities and equipment? Maybe pause the video here and have a think about some of the facilities that you do your lessons or your sports within, and some of the equipment that you use.

How might they cause a risk of injury? Here's an interesting image here of a football pitch, which has certainly seen better days.

Now, an important risk reduction method is checking the equipment and the facilities before they are used.

Now, surfaces such as this football pitch should be checked for damage, slip hazards, potholes, and foreign objects, such as broken glass, all of which might cause injury.

Lucas is equally amazed by the picture of the football pitch there.

Imagine what injuries could happen playing on that pitch.

What do you think might happen there? There's holes all over the pitch.

How might that lead to injuries to the performers? Imagine a game of hockey on that pitch, and the ball just jumping up because it's hit one of those uneven patches of the artificial turf, and maybe jumping up and hitting somebody.

Here we have a guy just checking the equipment there in the gym, don't we now? Gyms are great facilities for improving our health and fitness.

However, they are also potentially very dangerous places too.

Now, gym equipment can cause serious injury if it's faulty, and it needs to be checked regularly.

And also before using a gym, people should have an induction.

An induction means that they are taught how to use the correct techniques and how to use the machines correctly before going in and just trying it for the first time perhaps themselves, and using it incorrectly, and causing an injury to themselves.

Here, we see a tennis racket, don't we, that's broken.

Can you imagine what kind of injury that might cause? So equipment like tennis rackets, but all sorts of different types of equipment, should be checked regularly.

Damaged equipment with sharp edges like that tennis racket really create a risk of injury.

Other things to check before activity: things like removing jewellery and tying up long hair, checking the space requirements and how many people are in the group and trying to avoid overcrowding, things like weather forecasts and avoiding unsafe conditions.

If you're going to be performing outside, is the weather going to cause potential injury risks? So which of these facilities should be checked before they're used for a risk of slipping, in particular? Is it A, the swimming pool, B, the sports hall, or C, the artificial football pitch? Okay, so A might seem like the obvious answer there because swimming pools, especially the side where you walk around the edge of the swimming pool, is particularly prone to getting wet and therefore, slippy, but also spillages or leaks in the sports hall will also lead to rather slippery floors because they're very smooth hard floors that with a little bit of water on become quite hazardous.

Artificial AstroTurf generally have much better grip, and they are designed to get wet, and so less chance of slipping on those.

But of course, there are other injuries which can occur on artificial turf as well.

Second check for understanding.

Which of these are potential causes of injury to be checked for in sports facilities before an activity? So would you check for sharp objects on a hockey pitch, that's A, maybe B, somebody not following the rules during the game, how about C, people using gym equipment without using the correct technique, or D, checking whether there will enough space for the size of group that you have.

Now, the key word there, hopefully you noticed the key word in the question, was before the activity.

So something you would do before an activity would be to check for sharp objects on the pitch, and something you'd do before activity is planning for the size of the group that you have, and making sure there's enough space, or coming up with a different plan.

The other two, B and C, were both during the activity, aren't they? So somebody not following the rules of the game is something that's happening during the game.

People causing a hazard by using equipment in a gym without the correct technique is something during the activity, which could have perhaps been eliminated by making sure they were inducted before they used the gym.

I'd like you to imagine that the PT at your local gym is going to teach a strength and conditioning class in the weights room there at that gym.

So the first thing I'd like you to do is state two different checks of the weights room that that PT should perform before the class enters.

And for each of those different checks, could you suggest a risk which would occur to the students if they don't carry out the suggested check? Pause the video here, and write down your two checks and risks, and I'll see you in a moment with some ideas of what you might have said.

Okay, so let's have a look at some potential answers for this task.

Things you might have said.

Well, maybe they need to check the equipment for faults.

If they don't, faulty equipment might break while somebody is using it, which would then either fall on them or somebody else, and we're talking about some heavy weights in some cases, aren't we? They should check that there's enough space for the amount of people that are going to be participating, the class size.

If not, overcrowding could occur, and students might get struck by weights being used by another student, or somebody doing star jumps and hits somebody in the face who's too close to them because there's no room for everybody to fit.

They should check the floor for slip hazards, so is there any water on the floor, and trip hazards, has somebody left a barbell, or some dumbbells, or a kettlebell, or something lying around on the floor, which might cause a trip hazard? Something else they need to check is whether the students who are involved have been inducted to use the equipment.

If they're not, they might use poor technique and injure themselves, or maybe even somebody else.

Well done if you've managed to get two of those.

That brings us to our summary for today's lesson, a rather long lesson.

We learned lots today about preventing injuries.

Beginning of course, back at the beginning with the PAR-Q, now PAR-Qs should be used before beginning a new training programme or increasing the amount of activity to check for the person's readiness to exercise.

Then, we looked at how training should be carefully planned using principles of training to avoid overuse injuries, taking particular care to include rest and recovery.

We also looked at how many measures can be taken to reduce the risk of injury.

Things like categorising performance by age or weight or experience, or wearing protective equipment or clothing, and the performers abiding by the rules, they were all important methods during the activity.

And we also said how equipment and facilities should always be checked before use for their potential risks.

Wow, lots in today's lesson, wasn't there? But hopefully, this is really useful ideas on how you can keep yourself safe and other people safe as you continue to participate in physical activities.

So hopefully, that's some really useful information from today's lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you next time.