On this episode of the Healthy Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Martin Asker on the show to discuss a handball injury case study. Martin is a sports medicine therapist specialised in shoulders and biomechanics. He has worked with different elite European handball teams since 2000 and for the last 12 years with a special focus on youth and adolescent elite players. He works part time as clinical lead at a multidisciplinary sports medicine clinic in Stockholm, Sweden mainly seeing shoulder related problems and part time as a PhD-candidate at the Musculoskeletal & Sports injury Epidemiology Center (MUSIC) at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
In this episode, we discuss:
-Teasing out subjective findings and when to refer for imaging
-How the acute:chronic workload ratio impacts young handball athletes risk for injury
-Essential and nonessential objective measurements that are relevant for return to sport
-The importance of strength and conditioning in end ranges of motion and return to throwing programming
-And so much more!
Understanding the motivation behind why a youth athlete seeks care can help guide your patient education because, “They don’t see you when they are in pain, they see you when they can’t perform anymore.”
The acute:chronic workload ratio is an important consideration for injury management as Martin stresses, “Being an on and off, on and off player, it won’t do anymore.”
Your clinical tests and measures need to be robust enough to translate to the sport setting because, “What we measure on the bench does not correlate to what happens when they are throwing.”
Framing your language surrounding a shoulder health maintenance program as being a performance enhancer will help improve compliance as Martin has found that, “They care, but they care more about the performance than injury prevention.”
For more information on Martin:
Martin Asker, MSc, PhD-candidate
Martin is a sports medicine therapist specialised in shoulders and biomechanics. He has worked with different elite European handball teams since 2000 and for the last 12 years with a special focus on youth and adolescent elite players. He works part time as clinical lead at a multidisciplinary sports medicine clinic in Stockholm, Sweden mainly seeing shoulder related problems and part time as a PhD-candidate at the Musculoskeletal & Sports injury Epidemiology Center (MUSIC) at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. The overall aim of his PhD project is to deepen the knowledge in shoulder function in elite adolescent handball players and the specific aim is to investigate risk factors for, and prevention of shoulder injuries in such population. He also has a special interest throwing biomechanics and its relationship to throwing performance and injuries. Martin is also a board member of the Medical Committee of the Swedish Handball Federation and part of the medical team of the Swedish youth-16 national handball team.
Resources discussed on this show:
Email: martin@specialistgruppen.se
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Have a great week and stay Healthy Wealthy and Smart!
Xo Karen