Adrian Basilio/Reform Agency
Saturday, January 14, 2023 | 10:48
Mexico City- It is a proven fact that physical activity is important for physical and mental health, but doing it at medium and high intensity without prior preparation involves risks.
The so-called “weekend athletes”, who only meet in the evening of Friday or Saturday or who watch a football or basketball game on Sunday mornings are people who, although they practice sports, are the most prone to injury, which may even require surgery.
The lack of time to do physical activity for at least 30 minutes a day is not an excuse, much less a justification, because today more than ever people are seen focused on their cell phones, tablets, or computers for hours, which could be used to do exercise.
YOU MUST EXERCISE MORE
That half hour of exercise a day will allow us to better face a soccer game -whether on a normal field or on a fast court- or a basketball game because the muscles and aerobic capacity will be prepared for that task.
“Physical activity is any movement through which caloric expenditure is generated and sport is an orderly system of competition where there are rules. To practice your sport you need to have adaptations according to physical qualities: resistance, strength, flexibility, power, among others.
“These qualities are trained and that is why you cannot develop them in a single day on the weekend; in addition, there is the risk of injury or a cardiovascular problem,” warns Dr. Takeshi Aoyama, a specialist in Physical Activity and Sports medicine.
PANDEMIC INFLUENCES
The sports doctor who works at UNAM warns that currently a “weekend” athlete is more exposed to physical discomfort because he is returning from a long period of limitations to exercise due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We have been coming out of a two-year period of confinement and there are medical articles that reveal that being confined at home, regardless of whether they exercised, although not of the same quality, the population lowered their strength between 10 and 15 percent. ; then, by lowering this level of muscle mass, the risk of injury increased,” Aoyama warns.
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends: each person should exercise 150 minutes a week, divided into 30 minutes a day for five days, of which three should be dedicated to the aerobic aspect and the other two to strength.
HIGHLY EXPOSED
This recommended time should be for effective and specific exercise.
In the case of people who play sports for only one day, on weekends, going up and down the stairs at home or work, as well as walking to the office, do not meet the requirements to develop the adaptations needed by the organism to carry out a prolonged effort such as a football game.
“A specific time is required and, for this aerobic exercise to be efficient, it must have an adequate intensity, the heart rate must be working between 65 and 85 percent to really have a cardiovascular benefit.
“The same happens with strength exercises, to tone the different muscle groups, to then have the adaptations and resistance to the demands of a game,” explains the specialist.
WHAT ABOUT HYDRATION?
Practicing a physical activity dehydrates you, something that the weather also influences. A person who exercises regularly should drink 30 milliliters of liquid per kilogram of weight in average temperature, but if it is hot the amount of what should be drunk is increased.
If from the outset there are people who do not hydrate before or during a game and at the end they drink alcoholic beverages -instead of water or isotonic drinks-, the body will absorb alcohol faster and the person will get drunk faster. Also, you will become more dehydrated because drinks like beer are diuretics.
NO SUPERHEROES
You can be the best player on the team and even in the league where you play and want to participate in all the games that are proposed to you, but you are not a superhero. A little physical exhaustion can bring you serious consequences, warns doctor Takeshi Aoyama.
“There are those who arrive “live” (keep awake and even still drunk) to the game and they already do so dehydrated and tired, and that creates a cardiovascular risk,” warns the specialist.
It is very common for a person to play two soccer games on a large field, one in the morning and the other at noon, and even the Champions League professionals do not do that.
So after the first game he is sore, cramped and dehydrated and then he plays the other one, which makes him much more predisposed to muscle injuries.
“All of that adds up: the pace of the game if the opponent is very aggressive, the weather, even the pitch and the shoes you play in, all of that predisposes you to injury.”
WARMING UP IS KEY
The least a weekend athlete should do.
1 Before a game, you must have a general warm-up of all muscle groups, then a specific warm-up, depending on the specialty, for example, a goalkeeper must do specific exercises and different from the rest of the team.
2 The objective of the warm-up is to prepare the body before the general training session, which in this case is the match.
3 In this warm-up, the body temperature should be raised between .5 and 1 degree additional to the basal temperature, because this lubricates the joints and makes the muscles more viscous to have more elastic capacity and to avoid damage.
4 After the warm-up comes the sport and at the end of it comes the cool-down, which is to return the body to basal temperature, return it to normal, with flexibility exercises and stretching to relax muscles and joints, to avoid injuries. That is, at the end of the game you should not sit down.
