I remember picking up a stick for the first time and being confused on where to put it and what to do with it. I had just been in the need for a new group of friends, and a new hobby. That’s when my older cousin, introduced to me to the sport that I have ever really loved. It took me a while to learn how to play “properly” with my back straight and my stick down. Most people believe you can hurt your spine from playing with your back curved going through players and down the field. This thought has always crossed my mind since I played field hockey for four years and have had back issues, but always thought the causation was chance.
There was a study done to find out if field hockey players did have injuries due to playing the actual sport. The participants speculated that they had injuries and pain in their lower back and came to the conclusion it had something to do with field hockey. The subjects were female NCAA Division III field hockey players between the ages of 18 to 24. The study included taking a survey of the girls on the team of the kind of lower back pain they were experiencing that didn’t relate to their menstruation. The questions included how high their lower back pain was, the mechanisim of the injury, and locations of their symptoms. The study results actually shocked me in the way that they did not show any correlation of having to do with each other. According to the data from the study, the pain the women were feeling in their lower back had nothing to do with field hockey or playing it excessively.
I always played field hockey knowing to stretch my back and keep it straight or else I will have major back issues and do permanent damage to my lower back. Even though you can’t do damage to your back by playing field hockey, I still know the right and wrong of playing with a stick and a ball.
When I first read the title of this blog, I thought that the answer would most definitely be yes, it does cause damage to your back. During my middle school years, we would play field hockey in gym class. I always hated this unit because i had to bend down so much further than the average person because of my height. They never had the proper sized stick for me. I always complained about my back pain from bending over while playing. I do think that improper technique can cause temporary back pain, but it will not cause permanent damage to the back. I think it is super important that the proper technique is used, which was probably used by the NCAA players. I found these results to be super shocking and interesting, thanks for sharing!