Over 70 Million Reasons for Baby Boomers to Implement a Baseball Injury Prevention Regimen

FVO physicians inspire baby boomers to stay in the game by encouraging a regimen of baseball injury prevention techniques.

Baby boomers love baseball. The two go together like apple pie and ice cream. Unfortunately, baby boomers and knee replacement surgeries are also a common coupling. And, studies show, if the increasing demand for knee replacement surgery continues at its current rate, by 2016 a whopping seventy-two percent of requested knee replacements will not be performed. Injury prevention, therefore, is becoming as vital to boomers as their desire to stay fit.

For the past couple of decades, baby boomers have been taking full advantage of technological advances and surgical techniques to enable them to stay active well beyond the age at which their parents happily settled into the quiet times of their golden years.

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the boomers’ forty-five to sixty-four-year-old age group accounted for over forty percent of the more than 906,000 total knee or total hip replacement surgeries in 2009. Among the most successful procedures in medicine, it has been predicted that in the not too distant future physicians won’t be able to keep up with the increasing demand for total knee replacements surgery.

With an estimated American population of 72 to 79 million baby boomers – and so many intent on leading an active lifestyle well into their seventies and beyond – Fox Valley Orthopedic (FVO) recommends implementing a regimen of sports injury prevention as a way to ensure your body is able to perform at its optimum for as long as possible…and to avoid surgery.

“Baseball is one of the top three culprits for sports injuries in boomers,” says Dr. James Sostak, a former professional baseball player and sports medicine surgeon at FVO. “While it’s important for baby boomers to stay active and continue to participate in the sports they’ve always loved, a fifty-year-old body isn’t as invincible as a twenty-year-old body.”

Attention to safety and injury prevention can go a long way:

• Prepare to play with a pre-season physical exam in order to identify potential health problems such as allergies, asthma, heart, or orthopedic conditions.
• Avoid the “weekend warrior” syndrome by getting a minimum of thirty minutes of exercise each day.
• Increase exercise amounts gradually, by just a little each day.
• Balance exercise regimens by incorporating cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and flexibility.
• Warm up and stretch before every game with easy calisthenics, such as jumping jacks and/or a light running of the bases. Be sure to gently stretch your back, hamstrings, and shoulders.
• Wear properly fitting, position- and gender-specific equipment.
• Cool down after playing with gentle stretching to prepare your body for the game, and make recovery from exercise easier.
• Listen to your body, and modify your activity to accommodate your older body’s needs.