Touch Footy – get fit to play | The Healthy Body Company

Touch Footy – get fit to play

Published: 05 Aug 2020

At The Healthy Body Company we love Touch Footy and our big boss Steve Cunningham has been involved with Touch NSW and Touch Football Australia for over 23 years now. Such a longstanding relationship means that our team has seen our fair share of touch footy injuries at tournaments and through our clinics.

“The nature of Touch Footy involves lots of speed, quick direction changes and acceleration, agility, flexibility and endurance”

The most common touch footy injuries we see include sprains of ligaments, particularly of the ankle and knees when players have awkward landing techniques or poor dynamic control during change of direction. Some overuse injuries of the lower limb are common, such as shin splints, Achilles tendinopathy, stress fractures and patellar femoral pain syndrome. The hamstrings are renowned for copping strains especially during dumps and trys. Often players can get lower back pain or strains from this same mechanism too. And of course, who can forget the shoulder injuries. We’ve seen many dislocated shoulders and AC joint sprains/ruptures during tournaments usually by those players determined to make or break a score a try.

Steph Cummins one of our physios who has worked with the NSW and Aussie teams has put together some exercises for stretching and strengthening for Touch Players.

Stretching + Strengthen – when and how much?

Stretching can be (and ideally should be!) done every day and especially following every training session and game. Stretches need to be held for at least 30 seconds!! The hamstrings need good flexibility and so do your gluteal and hip flexor muscles.

Adding in some of the strengthening and agility exercises a few times a week during training sessions or outside of training within your own home or gym environment can help to build strength and avoid those injuries listed above.

**Hamstring Stretch:** Either position below will stretch out your hamstrings. Just make sure you keep your knee straight.

**Glutes stretch:** Place one foot across your body resting below your other bent knee. Push your knee down and out at your side till you feel a stretch into your glute. If you want more stretch you can pull wrap you arms through and pull your bent knee towards your body like the second photo.

touch footy physiotherapy — **Hip Flexor stretch:** Kneel into the position shown below and “tuck” your bottom under. You should feel this one at the front of your kneeling hip.

**Nordic Hamstrings:** You’ll need a partner or a solid couch to wrap you feet underneath for this one.
Have your feet secured to the ground behind you, then slowly and smoothy as possible lower towards the ground using your hamstrings to resist falling. Put out your arms to stop the fall and use them to push yourself upright to repeat. Do 8-12 reps and build up to 2-3 sets.

Touch footy physio — **Single-Leg Squat:** Stand on one leg and slowly bend your knee as far as you can maintain before straightening up again and repeat. Concentrate on not letting the knee track inwards and keeping you hips and upper body level throughout the movement. If this is too challenging you can lightly hold onto a wall/bench or start with both feet on the ground. Do 10-12 reps and x 2 sets on each leg.

Physiotherapy physio touch footy — **Jump Lunges:** Start in a lunge position and then quickly jump up to switch so the opposite foot lands forward as you lower into the lunge. Make sure your front knee does not creep past your toes. Do 12-15 jumps and x 2-3 sets.

Hopefully by taking our advice and working through the instructions above and adding in some of these exercises to your usual training routines we see less Touch players injured throughout this year. But, if you are unlucky enough to come down with an injury, be sure to come and see us (we always love seeing our Touch players at The Healthy Body Company!!) so we can work at getting your back on the field sooner rather than later.

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