Humans of Padel
Join your host Max Marsh Pickard, General Manager of Padel Art & Co founder of The Padel Outlet in a weekly entertaining dive into the world of Padel and the people involved in the industry
Humans of Padel
Unlocking Padel Performance | Injury Prevention and Recovery with Osteopath Nicolas Bideau
Instagram: @dr.bideau @healhub_rehab
We dive into the common injuries faced by padel players and explore preventive measures to reduce risks. Osteopath Nicolas Bideau shares expert insights on training loads, proper equipment, and lifestyle choices that enhance longevity in the sport.
• Discussing the role of osteopathy in sports medicine
• Identifying common injuries among padel players
• Understanding how to minimize the risk of injuries
• Addressing specific conditions like tennis elbow and shoulder issues
• Importance of proper equipment and technique adaptations
• Incorporating recovery practices into athletic routines
• Highlighting the significance of sleep and nutrition in injury prevention
• Recommendations for maintaining long-term health in padel
References:
Should I stretch?
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Effect of stretching on sport injury risk: a review - Hart (2005), J Sport Med.
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A systematic review into the efficacy of static stretching as part of a warm-up for the
prevention of exercise-related injury - Small & al. (2009), Res Sports Med.
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Acute Effects of Static Stretching on Muscle Strength and Power: An Attempt to
Clarify Previous Caveats - Chaabene & al. (2019), Front Physiol.
Pain education / psychosocial aspect (each chapter takes 1 minute to read)
https://www.retrainpai...
Cold plunges
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Effects of cold water immersion after exercise on fatigue, recovery and exercise
performance – meta analysis - Xiao & al. (2023), Front Physiol.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Humans of Paddle podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by osteopath Nicolas Bidot. In this episode, we cover the most common injuries that happen to paddle players and how you can prevent those injuries, and also many other interesting aspects of how you can maintain your longevity as a paddle player. I hope you enjoy the episode and have a great day. This is a moment that we've been waiting for for a while. Finally, our calendars have come together. We are here. This is actually a conversation that a lot of people have asked me to have about the health side of paddle and yourself being an osteopath. It's a great opportunity to get into that. So let's start with what is an osteopath?
Speaker 2:For sure. So osteopath is an hands-on therapist most of all. So we deal with musculoskeletal disorders, whether it's back pain, neck pain, knee pain, no matter any joint in the body, we can treat it. So we are hands-on therapists because we use our hands to diagnose and treat the patients and we collaborate with either general practitioners, sports medicine doctors to deal with this kind of injury that are quite frequent in a sports practitioner.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what's the difference between an osteopath and a chiropractor?
Speaker 2:It's quite similar, if you think, in terms of the technique that we use. We both use what we call either the vertebral adjustments or spinal manipulative technique. It's more about the clinical reasoning process. Sometimes that is a little bit different. Or sometimes, chiropractors, they only treat the spine and they don't work on either the upper limb or the lower limb. So where we osteopaths have different joint mobilization techniques for the entire body, from head to toe.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what are the common injuries? You must get a lot of business from paddle. I'm sure paddle has been great for you financially and as a sport. You're a reasonable player not that good, but you play well. But I'm sure you've seen a lot of paddle players come into your practice.
Speaker 2:True, and they are the patients that I love to see, actually, because I share the same interest with them. So tendon pain is usually the most common amongst paddle players, whether it's in the elbow, the shoulders or also the Achilles, because there's a lot of demands on the Achilles when you play paddle. So basically, that would be my top three elbow, shoulder and Achilles tendon pain.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go through them one by one.
Speaker 2:So how can we avoid these injuries? I like to say you cannot prevent any injuries, but you can reduce the risk of having an injury. So the more hours you play during a week or during a month, the more you expose yourself to developing an injury. However, with the proper sleep pattern, the proper nutrition, the proper training load, you can reduce that injury risk a lot, so it's health hygiene.
Speaker 1:So let's say elbow, because this is one I hear a lot of people have issues tendonitis, tennis elbow. It's as old as time. What is tennis elbow?
Speaker 2:So basically, it's the lateral tendons that attach to your elbow right here that becomes too irritated and it becomes painful, either to grip any object just like your racket, but sometimes also like a cup of coffee might be quite sensitive to hold or any resisted movement of the wrist to that extension motion. So basically, backhand volleys, backhand ground strokes, might be provocative when you have tennis elbow. It happens when the load that you applied on the tissue, the tendon, exceeds its capacity to recover or to adapt. So basically, doing too much too soon. Basic example you are a beginner, you start from zero to playing four times a week. Sudden overload, tissue's capacity is overwhelmed, tendons become irritated.
Speaker 1:But how can you, I don't know? Can you build muscle around it or how do you protect it? Like what's the because? It seems very confusing to me. It's not a muscle, right, and it's not. I can't stretch, can I stretch?
Speaker 2:it. It's not recommended to actually stretch these tendons because if you do this kind of stretches you will actually compress the tendon. So when it's irritated tendons they don't like compressive loads. So I would never recommend to stretch those particular tendons when you suffer from tennis elbow. So if you want to reduce the risk of having this injury, pay attention to your training load. Have like a gradual overload with plateau, so you train's say two times a week for a month, then you can slightly increase, et cetera, et cetera. And also I would say that the material that you use can play a huge role. For example, there are many beginners that have big hands and they don't use overgrip on their racket, so automatically the grip is thinner and they have to grip slightly harder the racket when they play. Automatically more load applied on the tendons.
Speaker 1:So you would suggest, if I have, let's say, tennis elbow issues my elbow, I use a thicker grip on my racket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially with your hand, if you don't play without overgrip, for sure you will irritate slightly more the tendons. So this kind of injury, it's like a micro repetitive load. So it's not going to happen from day one to day two, but over a few weeks, over a few months. And if you have like a very aggressive racket, like Coelho's racket, for sure in a month or two you will start feeling some pain Because the weight of the racket will also play into that, right yeah, and also if it's head heavy or it's more like you know, you know the balance of the racket can play a huge role.
Speaker 1:So you suggest that if I have tennis elbow, I should play with a lower balance?
Speaker 2:racket, exactly, or a lightweight racket. Pay attention to the grip. And if you play lots of backhands, for sure it's going to be more provocative. So if you play on the left side, the backhand serve return will be provocative. If you play on the right side, you're not going to enjoy your volleys in the middle, for sure.
Speaker 1:So there's no good side to play on if you have issues with the. For me, personally, I like having a very thin racket, but it's true there was a time when I was holding it very tight, but now I have a very loose grip when I hold the racket. So I feel it is a lot better, at least for my elbow, because I'm not gripping the racket super tight, and I think it's. A mistake a lot of beginners make is they hold the racket too tight Right and there's no need for that in paddle right. It's supposed to be relatively loose, loose, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you will grip automatically the racket when you impact the ball.
Speaker 1:So you don't want to hold the racket too tight and, of course, if you're too tight, you're going to use more your wrist the moment you're not playing the point to release the racket, so to let the racket hang on the string, just to release the racket. Release the arm so you can relax a little bit more the arm.
Speaker 2:Or you can use your non-racket hand to hold the racket. That's what I do all the time.
Speaker 1:In between points, you will always see me carrying theets with the opposite arm, so it's quite helpful to relax the arm automatically because you have the safety cord, so you don't have to reposition every time, just hold with the other arm and switch when you're ready to play again. You mentioned the shoulder. This one that I have issues with I mean the rotator cuff, I guess is something that people come to you yeah with, and I guess that's common with most racket sports yeah, any racket sports, any overhead sports.
Speaker 2:Basically because you're going to use a lot of these small tendons. They have a stability role also, these rotator cuff tendons. So you might feel sometimes slightly unstable and usually people who have a rotator cuff issue, they will hear their shoulder clicking a little bit more. That's one of their complaints. You might see sometimes people with shoulder pain they will tell you I feel my shoulder is clicking a little bit more and that's why we need to address these tendons also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel my shoulder is clicking a little bit more, and that's why we need to address these tendons also. Yeah, and how? But why do you think we get so many shoulder injuries? I mean obviously the. Is this just not a natural movement to make, or what do you think it? Why do you think it's so common?
Speaker 2:just like for the tennis elbow. It's more about the training load. Did you increase either your frequency, your volume or your intensity too fast? If you did that, then the tendons might be irritated. For the shoulders I say it's more present, of course, in overhead sports because automatically you will use more this rotational motion. When you do a smash, a bandeja or a vibras, you don't see that much this shoulder issue. For example, in tennis, when you have a few smashes and it's just the the serve, but in paddle, like 25 of the shots are loves. So all the time you're in overhead position to maintain it's hard impact as well.
Speaker 1:Right, the racket's relatively heavy, the ball's relatively heavy. Do you get, would you say badminton is less, or would you get more injuries in like racket, where the racket's lighter? I?
Speaker 2:think in badminton there's even more rotator cuff issue because if you at the amplitude in slow motion for the smash, it's just like flat smashes all the time. In badminton there's no, you know, look at a match on YouTube. If you watch badminton they're always jumping very high and they do this huge motion with the arm. So there's a lot of angles required for the shoulder mobility.
Speaker 1:You touched on something which is interesting. It's about the workload that you put on the shoulder, the elbow, no matter which part it is, and paddle is a sport that's very attractive to beginners right and to people who haven't necessarily played or competed in sports before they discover paddle. They love it, they love the game. It's a very fun and addictive sport and people go from not playing at all to playing every single day, and then that's where the injuries come in right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I think paddle is the only sport that I've seen with such high training load volume. In my entire life. I've always been into racket sports. I've never played five times a week a sport apart from paddle. So that's why, even though the sport is maybe less demanding than badminton or tennis, if your training volume is twice as what you would do with tennis or badminton, you will develop the same injury basically.
Speaker 1:But why do you think people play so much paddle? Why do you?
Speaker 2:think that volume is so high Because it's so addictive. It's true, the social aspect, that's fun because the possibilities of play in paddle are endless. The pattern, the tactical aspect, and you play with a partner, so you have to consider also your partner's weakness and strength. So to me the possibilities are endless. That's what I think.
Speaker 1:And from a cardio perspective, it's less demanding as well. Right, so maybe you can play every day, whereas playing tennis matches or badminton matches or squash matches, it feels a lot more intense when you play those other sports than paddle. It feels like, okay, I can. Feels like, okay, I can play tomorrow, I can play tomorrow, but then the repetition on your joints and it's obviously still there.
Speaker 2:If you talk about joints, yeah, but for tennis, if we talk about the achilles, now the amount of jumping and landing is way more important in paddle than in tennis. That's why you tend to develop more achilles issue in in paddle, because with all these lobs you have to jump land, recover every time, jump land, recover every time, jump land, recover every time. So for your achilles that works like a spring. It's this constant load that you're applying on it.
Speaker 1:I mean that's touch wood. I've never had an achilles injury and I hope it stays the same, but that's always been. My biggest fear is to have an achilles injury, because whenever you see professional athletes with an achilles injury, they're out for a very long time and the recovery time is very slow.
Speaker 2:How can we protect our Achilles Plyometrics? So jump rope Jump rope is a very good exercise to work on. That's a slow pace of you know, a high impact like this, but not like a high vertical jump. So jump rope is a very good exercise. Heel raise but make sure there are subcategories in Achilles pain. So sometimes I prefer to ask my patients to do heel raise on a step, for example, and don't go lower than the step level, because sometimes if you bring the heel too low you might compress also some of these tissues that are irritated. But basically, even when you warm up, I always suggest my friends and my patients to do some kind of heel raise, some kind of jog on the spot to prepare the Achilles to the demand that he's going to face.
Speaker 1:And how important is it to wear the right type of shoes.
Speaker 2:I think for the change of direction aspect, paddle shoes are even more important now because paddle became faster, more aggressive, so we tend to really accelerate the pace of the game and I think the shoes now are even more and more important. Even myself, when I look at the durability of my shoes, I play on average four to five times a week the shoes like last six months. On average you can see the insole or the the bottom part of the of the shoes get damaged quite, really fast. So I think it shows how hard it is to to adapt to this kind of change of direction aspect.
Speaker 1:Do you know what's the actual difference between a running shoe and a paddle shoe? If you were to use it on a paddle court, let's say I would slip all the time with the running shoes.
Speaker 2:I tried when I was a beginner to play with running shoes. I was slipping three or four times on average during a game. To play with running shoes, I was sleeping three or four times on average during a game. So to me, even the rackets and the shoes, it's like a huge technology behind it and I see the importance of wearing the right material during your matches. Honestly.
Speaker 1:Because what's actually the difference between the two shoes? Because I mean you wear running shoes, they feel higher, they feel thinner, right.
Speaker 2:So it's good for the heel aspect, for the Achilles, the fact that you have a slight cushioning aspect. But most of paddle shoes now if you look at the Adidas, the Nox, they also have like a high cushioning around the heel to prevent those repetitive bounce that might irritate slightly the Achilles. But I think it's more about the technology of how the shoes will grip the court whenever you want to switch direction. You know from a so more the sole of how the shoes will grip the court whenever you want to switch direction.
Speaker 1:You know from a so more the sole of the shoe. Yeah, the sole of the shoe. Yeah, it makes sense. As a left-handed player, you're a right-handed player. Are there injuries that are specific to each let's say, left-handed, right-handed player, or is it the same for everybody?
Speaker 2:I haven't noticed any major difference because a left-sided player is just like a right-sided player playing on the left side. Basically the only difference that I notice in terms of shot variation left-handed player tends to have easier vibras. It's much easier for you to do vibras than bandeira. I don't know why it's easier for you to produce side spin than back spin on the overhead shot. I don't know if you noticed that that's true actually?
Speaker 2:Yeah, All the left-handed players that I saw. They're very easy, very natural with their vibras, but in their technique it's quite hard for them to go underneath the ball with the bandeja. So, automatically, more vibras means more wrist movement, so maybe more forearm sensitivity or maybe slightly more increase of tennis elbow amongst left. How?
Speaker 1:did you notice that?
Speaker 2:Observation Every time I play a left-handed player, I see that you guys have good vibras, but you don't have a true bandeira.
Speaker 1:That's a very good point. Actually, and even thinking tennis with the kick serve, a lot of left-handed players have very, very good kick serves compared to right-handed players. So it makes sense, do you?
Speaker 2:think it's like the wrists. Yeah, but why? Left-handed players are more natural with the wrist, then, uh, maybe it comes from the brain. I have no idea.
Speaker 1:I would love to know more about that. If anyone listening to this has an idea or has a suggestion? We need a neurosurgeon. Yeah, back onto the preventative side and the curative side. You have a lot of paddle players. Obviously you play paddle and all of that.
Speaker 2:What other sports tend to come to see you as an osteopath Runners, of course, long-distance runner the training plane is even harder for them to follow. So many knee injuries, of course, when you're a runner, ankle sprain, of course that's the bread and butter of many physios and osteopaths. And low back pain of course my daily bread is the low back pain cases you know, especially from a middle-aged man or woman that start playing paddle and all of a sudden they become addicted to it four times a week. Low back pain.
Speaker 1:But is that from sport or is that just from our lifestyle? Because we're very Combination.
Speaker 2:There's no one root cause. There's always a combination of factors to explain a sudden acute episode of back pain.
Speaker 1:for sure, Because I guess you must have people coming to see you as well, who work in offices, who are just sitting all day in front of computers. Our posture has become terrible. I have terrible posture and always have done. Every time I've been to a doctor, they've told me you need to work on your posture. I never have done it. But what's the importance of changing your posture and how can we change our?
Speaker 2:posture. It's really hard to make a correlation between your posture and the onset of an episode. So I like to say that as long as you compensate the sedentary aspect of your work with the regular physical activity, you can always manage to reduce your risk of having back pain. I want you to think that you're having a back pain episode because of the posture that you adopt when you're working. But you're right Changing regularly posture is a good thing. Your best posture is your next posture, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we often make the mistake, especially when we have these very sedentive what's the word I'm looking for? Sedentary, sedentary, thank you. Thank God you're here. But people have very sedentary lifestyles and then we go and do sport, we go full on, and we go and do something like high intensity crossfit and we try and kill ourselves in 45 minutes or an hour.
Speaker 2:Where actually we'd be better off doing moderate exercise more often, right? Yeah, gradual load exposure, like we said, with some plateau. Because if we talk again about tendons, if you compare this tissue to muscles muscles they have a high metabolic rate. It means when you go to the gym you can exercise a lot, you can put lots of heavy weight. Yes, you'll have some muscle soreness for the next two or three days, but then you can resume back on and slightly increase the load on that tissue to work on the hypertrophy, for example, tendon.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work that way. Tendon has a low metabolic rate. So if you keep pushing more, pushing more, pushing more, that's when the tendon will become irritated, sometimes with micro tear. But the structural aspect is not the issue, it's more about the metabolic aspect of the tissue. So you need to work. Definitely a muscle and a tendon. You can go very hard at the gym every two or three days to improve your hypertrophy if you want to improve your um tendons capacity little and often. So me, like a lot of people this year have decided okay, I'm gonna start working out, I'm gonna lose weight, I'm getting married in august.
Speaker 1:I need to little, and often so me like a lot of people this year have decided okay, I'm going to start working out, I'm going to lose weight, I'm getting married in August. I need to lose 20 kilos, so thank you. So since January I've been going to the gym three, four times a week lifting weights, which so far I feel fine about. But I am concerned about how that's going to affect my tendons and how I can protect that and continue to lift the weight without injuring again my shoulder or again my elbow. So how can I keep increasing the weight that I'm lifting but at the same time protecting, like you mentioned, all these tendons and the other parts that don't recover as quickly?
Speaker 2:as the muscles. So you can split your session. I'm sure you know about this. You can do one day upper body, the other day lower body, like this. Of course you allow your tissue to recover for at least 24 hours in between sessions. That's something that is evident. But many people also, they play more than once a day, they play two games during the same day, so their tennis doesn't have the time to again adapt and recover in between match. So I usually say one match a day is already a a good level.
Speaker 2:But at the gym if you split, and again your coach if you're, if you train with a personal trainer will make sure that it doesn't uh, make you lift like 20 more the next day or two days after that. You know it's always like a gradual increase in the way that you, that you carry. But like, like I said, 24 to 48 hours for muscle is more than enough to recover. And tendons it's more about the tension. So it's more about the micro repetitive impact. So you see, it's not about the mobility or the range, it's more about the moment there's an impact or there's some tension that you build in a tendon. That's the purpose of your tendons is to hold the tension in the area compared to a muscle that is there to contract and lengthen every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, most of the people listening to this are going to be paddle players, right?
Speaker 2:So which sport would you recommend as complementary to paddle? If you like to go to the gym, you can work on your plyometrics. You will need strong quads, strong calf muscles. We mentioned about this plyometric aspect jumping and landing. That is essential in paddle. Otherwise, you can work on your cardiovascular aspect with a simple cycling running if you like to go for a run.
Speaker 2:Right now it's the best weather in Dubai, so you can go outdoor to work on that. Apart from that, honestly, you're good because, at the end of the day, you have a life, you have a work, so you cannot spend three hours every day to work on that. Apart from that, honestly, uh, you're good because, at the end of the day, you have a life, you have a work, so you cannot spend three hours every day to to work on something you know. So if you play three times a week, uh, let's say, you can have one strength and conditioning session during the week and maybe another one about mobility outside of your uh matches time to work on your chest mobility, shoulder mobility, with this, which is essential also in a in paddle, yeah something I always hear, and there's two conflicting kind of opinions about it.
Speaker 1:Is it better to stretch before you play or after you?
Speaker 2:play. So if we talk about static stretching, I don't think it's interesting to stretch before a match. You want to prepare your muscles to the demand that you're going to face, so basically you're going to contract your muscles during the effort. If you do the opposite way, by trying to lengthen or increase the stretch tolerance, you don't prepare your muscles to the load, so automatically there's a decrease of performance and we have studies that show that static stretching tends to decrease performance just before the exercise. So I like to incorporate more something dynamic, just like a warmup to prepare the muscles to the load that you're going to face. Simple thing, for example imagine someone who goes to the gym wants to do squat exercise today. They're going to start with just body weight squat or barbell squat and then gradually will increase the weight. Same principle for a warm-up. If you know that you're going to jump, you're going to do some heel raises or some jog on the spot. You might do a few lunges, a few squats and some shoulder mobility to prepare your joints.
Speaker 1:So you say warm-up, do the sport and stretch after. Is there a benefit to static?
Speaker 2:stretching In terms of recovery. We don't have serious data that say that you will reduce your risk of injury by stretching after the game. It might change your perception of soreness for a few people, but not everyone. I would say that the key things to recovery, of course, is a good sleep. Six to nine hours of sleep, of course, will make sure that your tissues recover. Proper nutrition, whether it's about protein intakes, carbs intakes and lipid intakes, and you can add sometimes some cold stuff like cold plunges, or you can apply cold to an area that feels slightly sore.
Speaker 1:That might be also beneficial Because I feel, when I was growing up, and even before that in my generation, everyone talks about stretching. You have to stretch, you have to stretch, you have to stretch, but I feel we've moved on from that. So what's the purpose of stretching? Is it just for flexibility and mobility, or why should we stretch?
Speaker 2:again, it can be more dynamically because we need more mobility to to perform at the at the top. But static stretching tends to be more and more debated, like I told you. So I prefer to use more approach, whether it's for the back pain or for the shoulders, because we want the movement to be functional. And, of course, if you stretch your shoulder in a particular way, let's say, for example, you're never going to be in that situation in a paddle game unless you're in a constant back end preparation. But basically there's always movement associated with your, with your sport, so it's better to focus on movement than the static aspect of any exercise okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 1:You talked about the cold plunges, the cold, but that's very trendy at the moment or maybe I just discovered it, but I feel like everyone's talking about doing cold baths, cold plunges. We get a lot here telling us we should put a ice bath, but I feel it's something that people like the idea of it, but then are people actually going to use it? What's the actual benefit of it? How often should you use it? Should you use it? Should everybody use it? What's your point on this?
Speaker 2:So we have different protocols, but I recommend it's better after a match. So, for example, people who play lots of tournaments, this is very interesting to do it right after the tournaments to reduce the soreness aspect, especially if they want to train the next day. We have studies that show that it helps to improve the dumps, the delayed onset of muscle soreness right after this kind of performance, very explosive also for sprinters. We tend to use that a lot also with football athletes. The rule that we use is one minute per degree, because you can of course do these cold plunges at different temperatures. If you do 10 degrees bath, you do 10 minutes. If the water is four degrees, you do four minutes, and we have no interest of doing more than 15 minutes for the cold plunge. There's no benefits that has been shown to do more than 15 minutes. Maybe pneumonia is a problem or hypothermia basically, but usually I work in a center that proposes this kind of services and you're always guided, because of course you don't want to let anyone go on their own. On the first occasion.
Speaker 1:That is one of my biggest fears. Honestly putting it here, if we put an ice plunge, people go in it. They're not fit enough to use it, they die in. Ice plunge people go in it. They're not fit enough to use it, they die in the plunge, and then who's liable.
Speaker 2:There's proper breath work to work on priorly and it's better to have someone that guides you about your breath because you might change your breathing pattern also when you enter the cold plunge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on the opposite side of the spectrum, what about saunas? I love saunas. Is there a benefit in recovery for that?
Speaker 2:Of course, when you don't have oh yes, actually when you have some kind of tissue damage, whether it's in the muscles or in the ligaments, increasing the blood flow might help to recover this catabolic aspect. So of course there will be more nutrient, more oxygen coming to the tissue to help repair it. And we also tend to combine these two approaches. This is what we call contrast therapy. So you got to be prepared, when you alternate sauna cold plunge, sauna cold plunge, to have this very vasoconstriction aspect on your blood vessels, the arteria, to increase the recovery aspect.
Speaker 1:And you guys have all of that where you work, yeah, so this is the time let's talk a little bit about where you do work. Let's talk about HealHub. So you're an osteopath, you come there, so it's an all-inclusive treatment. What kind of services are you guys offering and how can, let's say, athletes or athletes like myself, or the people listening to this, can benefit from that?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So basically, most of the time they enter the clinic because they have some musculoskeletal disorders whether musculoskeletal disorders, whether it's a joint issue, a tendon issue or a muscle issue and then we suggest to combine with different recovery services or biohacking services to maximize their recovery so they can get their full potential also to resume sports or even to prevent further injury.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that we talked about, even the ice pass. It applies to high performance athletes. Right, you're looking at a quicker recovery. But a normal person who just wants to play two, three times a week, they want to play paddle for the next 40, 50 years. What are some simple pieces of advice, some simple tips that you can give them for them to be able to maintain that longevity in the game, so like?
Speaker 2:we said for the recovery aspect, the top two things to focus on is proper sleep and proper nutrition. Basically, you need the right amount of fuel to go to your body to avoid an urgency deficiency because people who play every day of course automatically there is a calorie loss that you need to replenish with some good nutritional food.
Speaker 1:So a healthy lifestyle, I guess, is key to everything. What do you think is an ideal amount of sleep?
Speaker 2:From the data perspective, we usually say between six and nine hours. We have studies that show if you sleep less than six hours or more than nine hours, you are more prone to feel pain the next day, even if you sleep more. Yeah, how, I don't know. It's just again, observational studies. People who tend to sleep more than nine hours, they tend to feel more pain the next day. But this is a larger window, you know. Six to nine hours. Maybe you need only six or seven, just like me. Women usually tend to need to sleep a little bit more than uh, than men, maybe because of hormonal or aspect. They feel more fatigued.
Speaker 1:Also, their pain tolerance usually is a little bit different, so they usually need to to sleep a little bit more yeah, for me, I feel like some days I'll sleep like 10 hours and then some days I'll sleep four hours and there's no, there's no consistency to it. But average.
Speaker 2:But how do you explain that you're able to sleep four hours or a night?
Speaker 1:I don't know, sometimes you just wake up. I don't know, there's no alarm. It's always you just wake up. Yeah, I mean, I went months. I would wake up at 5.30 every morning. I would go to bed at midnight, I would wake up at 5.30 and I would feel and I don't know, I can't explain it, and nothing has changed in my life.
Speaker 2:Maybe stress. I'm just giving you again the output that I have from the. Don't explain everything, it's just to give you an idea. Of course it doesn't. You're not patient A, I'm not patient B. We're all different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean everything is case by case as well. I mean, whenever you get averages, it ultimately means nothing right of that spectrum. And speaking of stress, let's say speak about the mental side of it. Right me being stressed or having issues in my life, can that affect my injuries? Can I be more prone to injury if I am stressed?
Speaker 2:for sure, for sure because, of course, first of all, when you play, if you're stressed, you will tend to be more tense, whether it's in your arm, whether it's in your legs. And we saw that when we're tense we tend to grip the racket a little bit more. If we grip the racket more automatically, more load applied on your tendon, so slightly risk of injury. Otherwise, there is a causal relationship between stress and pain. So when you are more stressed you are more prone to develop any musculoskeletal pain. So of course there's a cognitive aspect of pain related to that.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, though that just being stressed, I'm going to feel more pain, yeah.
Speaker 2:How does that work? Do you know how that works? That's too complicated. That's a whole different. That's not your area of expertise, I can give the audience some pain education aspects so they understand the role of the brain in the pain perception and pain onset. You know we have a simple data that are online that you that I can share to sure I'll put some links.
Speaker 1:If people are interested in it, we can have a look. I mean, um, I guess, ultimately, what we know is that the less stressed you are, the happier you are, the less injuries you get right. Yeah, so if we stay healthy and happy and we sleep well, chances are we're going to see you less.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, life is adult, life is way more complicated than what you described. So you will always have some work, requirements, work, you know, workload, or how do you say in English, deadlines, yeah, deadlines basically, deadlines, basically. So of course, there are more times in your life that you will be more exposed to stress. If your kid is sick, if you sleep for three hours because he or she had a bad night, and if you play the next day, slightly increased risk of injury, of course, definitely. Why did you decide to become an osteopath.
Speaker 2:I've always been interested in the healthcare system because I've always played many sports. In my life I've done almost all the racket sports and I think it's the continuity of sports. You know, being a healthcare provider, of course.
Speaker 1:And what does the future hold for you?
Speaker 2:Having another kid because my thank you my wife is 14 weeks pregnant, so I will be a father of a second child this summer. I hope I'll stay in Dubai because so far the city has been great for me, so it's a blessing to be there.
Speaker 1:Will you get your kids to play paddle?
Speaker 2:For sure. And I have two boys so they can play with me. Or we can even do a mix, of course, if I had a daughter.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I will have two boys, so for sure, yeah, you can make a team, yeah, and then they can compete together. You can have professional kids as paddlers yeah, that's the plan. That's the plan. At least they'll be well taken care of. You know, from a physical aspect they'll be well taken care of. Yeah, I think that's amazing. And um, is there anything else that you'd like to discuss? Anything you want to go back on?
Speaker 2:no, I'd love to to play against you, uh, very soon, because it's always great matches, it's always good fun.
Speaker 1:We always have good matches. We'll have to play again.
Speaker 2:I'll be using my lefty, yeah now you'll think about that every time you play against a left handed player. Watch their wrist.
Speaker 1:They always use vibras and I'm gonna miss them all now you wanna correct yourself. Nicolas, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. I'm sure we'll do this again another time. It's always good to have a little bit of a health point of view and how we can. I hope people got some tips today about how they can prevent injuries. If they do have injuries, they know where to find you now.
Speaker 2:Yeah Hill Hub, Jumeirah Road, next to Kite Beach.
Speaker 1:There we go. I'll put his contact details down below and for the clinic, and looking forward to it again. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Max.