When it comes to extreme sports, most people picture things that can cause massive and sometimes fatal injuries. However, as a soccer player, I can tell you that not all extreme sports have to be life risking tricks and stunts. Our team and others like us, all have a lot of battle wounds each season and even though we aren’t risking life and limb on the field, we are still in jeopardy of our own brand of injuries that can make it impossible to play the sport we love.

The Name of the Game

Any sport that a person plays can cause injuries. The severity of the injury depends on what type sport you are playing and what exactly goes wrong at that one moment when the game turns into something that isn’t much fun. Each player on our team was warned before they began playing that they were risking injuries to the legs. Every player accepted that risk and none of us have managed to escape a full season without either a leg, knee, or ankle injury. However, because we love the sport of soccer playing, we all are willing to feel a little pain sometimes. It is just part of the game. Part of defending the ball well and scoring all the goals that we can.

Coping with Injuries

Instead of giving up after a bad game that injures some part of our body, we have learned how to work out to regain the strength in our injured muscles. It is something that we also do before an injury takes place to try and prevent an injury from occurring in the first place. We practice with a low impact workout and then use aquatic therapy to help us heal after a sprain or a strain. It helps us deal with pulled muscles and weakened tendons.

How We Heal Faster than Other Teams

Since we use aquatic therapy before, during, and after an injury, we often heal up faster than other teams that go against us during a season. When asked what our secret is, we talk to them about the fact that we have a great pool to work out in. Their first response is usually curiosity about the type of workouts we do to heal a specific injury. Once that curiosity is satisfied, they usually get onto the topic of how hard a pool is to maintain. Once that comes up, we tell them that thanks to our above ground pool vacuum, we have very little trouble keeping it sparkling clean and always ready for us to get into. This statement is usually met with disbelief, but of the few teams we invited back to our place, their disbelief is soon replaced with awe and questions about whether they can take a dip or not.

Some opposing teams have opted to join us in our aquatic therapy idea. They set up their own pools and ask us what type of chemicals we use. We do not mind sharing what we know. We figure the more injuries those players have, the less gameplay we will get and none of us want to sacrifice playing soccer.