Why weekend sports are sending more people to injury wards

Covid triggered a fitness awakening. The result was an explosion in the number of people taking up serious running and also recreational sports like pickleball and padel. Today, the imprint of a large population of amateurs taking up physical activity as ‘weekend players and athletes’ is visible across orthopaedic clinics that are seeing recreational fitness injuries. The most common are meniscal tears (of the knee), Achilles tendinitis (inflamed Achilles tendon that connects calf muscles with heel bone), elbow stress and shoulder strain, the result of muscles not being prepared for the stress overload that heavy physical activity brings.
“The danger is that players underestimate the physical load of a sport like pickleball,” says senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr Parag Sancheti, chairman of Sancheti Institute of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Pune.