Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Take Caution Practicing In Hot Weather

The fall sports season is just "heating up".

"Heating up" is not a joke. Hot weather can make practices difficult for fall sports like football and soccer that come with vigorous physical activity. We've all read the horror stories about athletes collapsing or even dying because proper care wasn't taken to address heat conditions.

A few words of advice -- Make sure to have plenty of water on hand at practices and encourage players to bring their own as well. Go without or light on the equipment for the first few days. Also go light on the physical activities until athletes adjust to the heat. Finally, it's never a bad idea to have some towels and ice on hand for players who are overcome by heat.

These articles are reminders of some of the tragedies that can strike by not being careful in hot weather and they offer some additional information about ways to help keep your players healthy in the heat. Read this article by Laura Yao from the Wall Street Journal - http://tinyurl.com/q3dzmn about high schools working to ease heat-related sports injuries and this one by Selena Roberts in Sports Illustrated about the tragic heat-related death of former Minnesota Vikings player, Korey Stringer - http://tinyurl.com/nlzvtj.

1 comment:

Mark said...

I remember back in the day the Coaches would give us salt tablets and make sure we didn't drink too much water!