Oakland Tech High School Injury Prevention Workshop

For Fall 2022 cross country season, I was invited to be the guest speaker for Oakland Tech High School. With local community help, I donated 30 resistance bands to the program so they have the equipment they need to do their exercises.

We talked about the most common running injuries and almost every high school athlete raised their hand when I asked about shin splints. The most important thing for high school athletes to understand is differentiating between pain from injury vs soreness. There’s also pain you can run through (< 3/10) and pain you should not run through (>4/10, limping, swelling, sharp). Communication between athletes and coaches is critical as I know athletes are often scared to tell their coaches they have pain out of fear that they will be told to rest. Rest isn’t always the solution and your coach can help you modify your running early on so your injury doesn’t progress.

Developing strong hips and core is important for high school athletes to decrease risk of injury and we went over the KEY basic exercises to do with resistance bands. We focused on our technique and what compensations to avoid with each exercise.

The goal of this workshop is for high school athletes is to learn how to prevent common injuries, recognize the early signs/symptoms, and how to communicate to your coach about your injury.