There seems to me to be a rise in NFL injuries this year.  I know it is only two weeks into the season and I don’t have any numbers to back it up.  It just seems to me that NFL players are getting injuries, season ending injuries, at a faster rate than year’s past.

I know this isn’t a scientific number, but I play in a fantasy football league and counted all the injuries that kept players out of some parts of their game in Week 2.  In case you aren’t familiar with fantasy football, you create a team made up of the skill positions – quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, and throw a kicker and defense on the team.

There are 10 teams in my league with 16 roster spots on a team.  If you take away defenses (because those are entire teams) that leaves you with around 150 players on all these teams.  About 22 players were hurt or got hurt for Week 2.  That is about 15 percent of the best players in the league for those positions are hurt.  Not including, players we didn’t draft and individual players on defense.  I heard some crazy stat that the New York Giants have 9 players out for the season (or at least with serious injuries).

The reason I think all these injuries are prominent now is because of the lockout.  The lockout prevented the teams from doing their off-season workouts.  Consequently, some of the players weren’t able to prep their bodies appropriately to handle the rigors of the NFL.  Let me explain.

When I was working with Armand Robinson as he was getting in shape to play for the Steelers, I had him on a program that consisted of strength training, speed/conditioning training, and flexibility.  Yes, I wanted to see if we could get him stronger and as fast as possible, but there was another reason to do this program.

It was to get his body in a shape that would help prevent injuries or if he did get injured bounce back quicker.  A lot of NFL players will pay good money to trainers to get them in shape, but there are some that don’t take those workouts as seriously if they do them at all.  If you aren’t working out or not doing the right things during that workout, the athlete’s body is essentially no different than someone who works out at the gym and decides to play intramural softball when the season starts.

Meaning, when you get older into your late 20’s and 30’s, you can no longer be doing nothing for a duration of months and then expect to run full speed and your body not react to that.  I.e. resting during the off-season, doing nothing, then go to mini-camp and start doing full speed drills.  As you get older, it gets tougher and tougher for your body to do that and not get injured, I don’t care how good an athlete you are.

So, going back to Armand, we were trying to keep him in shape and prep his body accordingly so he could handle the hits, the sharp cuts, the pounding, and the sudden bursts of explosiveness and his body would be alright.  It does him no good if he is good enough to be one of the receivers on the field, but he is sitting on the bench because he has continual injuries.

The strength training got his muscles, ligaments, cartilage, etc., stronger and able to handle high stress.  The speed training/conditioning work we did, put that stress into high gear.  We did explosive jumps on one leg and two to help simulate the explosions and duress his joints might feel on the field.  Plus, we did agility drills that mimicked the movements he would do on the field, thus his body had no surprises when he did enter camp.

The flexibility we did I think was key.  I put together an active recovery program to help his body break up and loosen up the muscles, then stretch them out to improve the flexibility to keep him limber and recover quicker from the activity.

First, I would have him use the foam roller on his body parts.  We would get his legs – front, side, and rear – , his lower back, his upper back, and his rib cage/arm pits.  What the foam roller does is basically a self massage.  So, if you had a rough practice or workout and the muscles were tired, you used the foam roller to loosen those muscles up and help alleviate some of the soreness.

We would then do any corrective exercises he needed to do to stay balanced.  In Armand’s case, he scored well on the Functional Movement Screen that I do, so no corrective exercises were needed, but for other athletes I would do those here.

Finally, we would get a good stretch all over.  If he had any aches or pains, the combination of all three items would help with the healing process and get him back to 100% faster.  If he didn’t have any aches or pains, this program would help to keep his body rejuvenated and recover from the workout he just did faster.  Then with proper rest, he would be good to go for the next day’s activity.

Maybe, the NFL’s injury rate this year is normal.  I just think there are a lot of people getting injured and this would be my reason why.  If you are an athlete you need to do all three facets of what I discussed to really prevent injury, but if you are playing right now and missed the boat on the strength training and speed work, then you at least need to do the active recovery to try and work out your soreness and keep the muscles and joints pain-free.

Hope you enjoy your weekend.  If you are watching NFL games on Sunday, take note of who gets injured this week.  We’ll get a good look to see who was doing serious workouts in the off-season and who was sipping pina coladas by the poolside.  Hopefully, it isn’t one of your key players on your favorite team.