Medical condition
Studies have already pointed out that competitive sports positively affect athletes’ health which can be detected even later in their career. In the views of Silva, Andersen, Aires, Mota, Oliveira and Ribeiro (2013) competitive sports within clubs develop athletes’ stamina, fitness compared with the data of other institutional forms of sports. Data also supported professionals’ belief that competitive sports favourably affect bone density besides fitness. Even 75 year old athletes’ condition regarding their bones back up these views (Nilson, at al, 2008). High achiever athletes later in their career lead healthier and active life compared with their contemporaries who have never done any sports (Backmand et al, 2010).
It is a well-known fact that active athletes are disposed to all sorts of injuries. Every year in the EU about 4.5 millions of 15 year old or a little older athletes are examined, diagnosed and treated with sports injuries. Two-third of them is males, 40% of them are team athletes, more exactly ball players (Kisser and Bauer, 2010). Most athletes as football players in the USA get injured. Frequent and lots of injuries occur in case of wrestlers and female basket ball players (Darrow et al, 2009). In Hungary mainly football players are injured which are mainly, for example, knee and ankle injuries4.
Athletes are not only disposed to injuries but also to different hurts. Being continuously overburdened may mean that their tissue injuries develop inflammatory and degenerative lesions. If these abnormal tissue changes are not treated they cause degenerative changes and if these athletes do not rest for some time they will have chronicle complaints, for example, tennis elbow, jumping knee etc. Nowadays professionals have started focusing on a non-sport specific injury which is recurrent back pain and this may develop in quite an early age. According to the outcomes of surveys it has become clear that more time athletes spend doing competitive sports the more often they have back aches compared with others who do not do any sports (Hangai, 2010, Schmidt et al, 2014).