The benefits of multi-sports training for rehabilitation
After Emma Raducanu’s US Open win last week, we soon started to learn a lot more about the young British star.
Raducanu’s coach at the LTA, Matt James his thoughts on her success, which he described having a benefit to her learning new skills very quickly because of her coordination and ability to recognise those patterns from other sports.
At Optimum Derby, we encourage a variety of different movements during rehabilitation for this very reason, the more we can expose you to different scenarios and patterns the more improvement you will have in recovery and reduce the risk of the same injury happening again.
Multiple pieces of research have shown how multi-sports as a child help to produce more rounded athlete, a more robust athlete and a successful athlete.
Ajax FC famous football academy has produced some outstanding players but its academy has a unique training style, where the children are encouraged to play basketball, football, tennis, rock climbing and even dance and ballet.
Raducanu took part in many sports as a child not knowing that these would all be helping to contribute to her success on the court. ‘Golf, ballet, horse riding, skiing, basketball, table tennis and even go-karting. “I was initially in ballet, then my dad hijacked me from ballet and threw me into every sport you could imagine,” Raducanu explained this year.
“I was doing horse riding, swimming, tap dancing, basketball, skiing, golf and, from the age of five to eight, I was go-karting. I started my very short go-karting career in a bus garage in Streatham before going to a proper track. From the age of nine I started motocross in a forest somewhere for a year. This was all alongside tennis.”
Only in her early teens did she focus on tennis. Unknown to Raducanu, she was following the Roger Federer blueprint for success almost to the letter.’
At Optimum Derby, we encourage children and adults to partake in multiple sports to assist with different movement patterns, we as therapists do this within our rehabilitation methods and techniques too.
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