The physiotherapist, Andrés Mundilla, analyzes the injury epidemiology of paddle tennis
Today's article is about injury epidemiology of paddle tennis from the point of view of physiotherapy, taking current evidence as a reference.
Nowadays, paddle tennis is one of the sports most practiced by the entire Spanish population, not only professionally or semi-professionally, but also as a recreational sport. As with other racket sports, the repetition of specific actions and gestures of said game may be a factor associated with one or more types of musculoskeletal injuries.
The main risk factors of injury observed were age, laterality and body mass index.
Based on different studies, it is observed that the regions with the highest injury incidence are the elbow, lumbar spine, knee and shoulder joint complex. The pathologies most observed in the upper extremities were tendinopathies, poorly known as “tendonitis” or in the case of the elbow as “epicondylitis.” In turn, the most predominant muscle tear occurs in the triceps surae (gastroncemios and soleus), known as the “tennis leg”, where the main characteristic is noticing a “stoned” sensation in the leg after a snatch.
On the other hand, it should be noted that despite having clearly defined lesion foci, There are differences between senior and junior players. Older players suffer more injuries at the elbow and knee, however, young players have a higher rate in the lumbar region.
These findings could help trainers and physical therapists create preventive programs focused mainly on the scapulohumeral joint, lumbo-pelvic motor control and lower extremity strength.
