Top 6 things that bother me (as a physiotherapist) about Televised Sport

I love to watch sports and enjoy it the same way most people do - for the competition and pure spectacle of it. But every once and a while something just irks the physiotherapist in me. So here are the top 6 things that bother me about televised sports:

6. Not showing what the therapists are doing out there on the field. I want to see what tests they are doing and from that extrapolate what they think the injury is (although I do recognize that this may not be interesting to everyone...)
5. Not showing enough replays of injuries. Unless there are bones sticking out, I kinda want to watch it again (and again and again.)  I want to figure out what the injury is!!
4. The "magic" sponge. C'mon people, after that spectacular fall, a wipe down with a sponge and you are all better? What drama school did you go to?
3. Labeling an injury "upper body" or "lower body" injury. Really? This is top secret information?? Just give me the details already.
2. Announcers shortening or not labeling the injury. One example that really gets me is when it is announced that so-and-so "has a hamstring." Well, yes they do. So do you, and I and almost everyone else on the planet. There is more than one thing that could be wrong with said hamstring.

And the number one thing that irks me about televised sport is..

1. The inference that it is because an athlete had "all the best treatment" they have recovered so well. While this may be partly true, it negates the fact that the athlete is a)in amazing physical shape to begin with and will thus recover more easily and b)that the athlete probably WORKED THIER BUTT OFF to get there! I would like that to be the take home message to the public... not that there is some magic physiotherapy treatment that they are missing out on!

By Rebecca Chambers, Registered Physiotherapist, Acupuncture and Fascial Stretch Therapist.
Picture courtesy of Google Images.