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Surprise Sport Ledger
A field guide for the rest-of-us athlete

Surprise Sport Ledger

Ask what matters before you play again

Surprise gives you many ways to stay active outdoors. Joint soreness can raise simple questions about rest, exercise, and getting an exam.

These answers can't tell you exactly what was hurt. I'd start with the question that sounds most like your day.

What does a sports medicine doctor do?

The doctor asks when the soreness started and checks the joint's motion, strength, and tender spots. You'll discuss home changes, guided exercise, and whether more testing, including an X-ray, would help.

Why did my tendon start hurting all at once?

Tendon soreness can seem sudden after extra games, hills, swings, lifting, or chores. It doesn't tell you when the tendon first changed, so mention any recent increase to the person examining you.

What's the most common injury in pickleball?

Falls, sprains, strains, and broken bones can all happen during pickleball. What matters most for your care is how you were hurt, where soreness sits, and whether the joint still works normally.

What is the most common golf injury?

Golf can leave the elbow, back, shoulder, hip, knee, wrist, or foot sore. There isn't one answer for every golfer, so count your swings, walking, practice time, and other exercise together.

Are there sports medicine clinics near me in Arizona?

Near Thunderbird Road and 94th Drive, the Peoria QC Kinetix office offers consultations and non-surgical care made with blood taken from you. Before booking, ask who examines you, what you'll owe, and where the clinic sends urgent injuries.

Is hiking in Arizona hard on your knees and ankles?

Uneven ground and downhill steps make your knees, ankles, calves, and feet work harder. Hiking isn't always harmful, but sharp pain, soreness at night, swelling, or trouble bearing weight deserves an exam.

Is golfing year-round in Arizona an overuse risk?

It can be when swings and walking increase faster than your body recovers. Regular play isn't the only issue; a quick increase after travel, illness, or time away may matter more.

Sources

  1. Tendinopathy is described in the Nature Reviews Disease Primers review as a complex, multifaceted tendon pathology - disorganised collagen fibres, increased microvasculature and sensory nerve ingrowth, dysregulated matrix homeostasis, increased immune cells and inflammatory mediators, and enhanced cell apoptosis - most commonly affecting the rotator cuff, the medial and lateral elbow epicondyles, the patellar tendon, the gluteal tendons and the Achilles. The authors state plainly that management consists of exercise and loading programmes, therapeutic modalities and surgery, and that their effectiveness 'remains ambiguous'.

    Millar NL, et al. — Tendinopathy.. Nat Rev Dis Primers, 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41572-020-00234-1.

  2. A ten-year analysis of the US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System covering adults aged 55 and over in 12 popular non-contact and limited-contact sports found 5,561 cases, a national estimate of 287,255 injuries. Golf (22.8%), pickleball (17.0%), tennis (13.4%) and weight lifting (12.9%) accounted for most of them. Sprains and strains were most common overall (56.9%), but fractures predominated in pickleball, tennis, baseball and soccer, fracture risk rose steeply with age, and pickleball injuries increased 925% since 2014, overtaking golf as the highest-incidence sport in recent years.

    Qi A, et al. — Sports-Related Orthopaedic Injuries in the Older Athlete: A 10-Year NEISS Database Analysis.. Orthop J Sports Med, 2025. DOI: 10.1177/23259671251360439.

  3. A NEISS analysis of pickleball injuries from 2012 to 2021 found 53,649 weighted cases. Players aged 65 and over accounted for 83% of injuries, though the younger group's annual rate of increase was higher. Slips, trips, falls and dives caused 64.3% of injuries. Older players were about three times more likely to sustain fractures (OR 2.96) and to be injured by a fall (OR 2.75); younger players were more likely to sustain strains and sprains (OR 1.86) from sudden stops and lunging.

    Kulkarni R, et al. — Epidemiology of pickleball injuries by age group treated in emergency departments in the United States.. Phys Sportsmed, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/00913847.2025.2539062.

  4. In 25 randomised trials covering 26,610 participants and 3,464 injuries, STRENGTH TRAINING reduced sports injuries to less than a third (RR 0.315, 95% CI 0.207-0.480) and proprioception training roughly halved them (RR 0.550, 0.347-0.869), while STRETCHING showed no protective effect at all (RR 0.963, 0.846-1.095). Overuse injuries specifically were nearly halved by exercise programmes (RR 0.527, 0.373-0.746).

    Lauersen JB, et al. — The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.. Br J Sports Med, 2014. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2013-092538.

  5. The Bern consensus frames return to sport as a CONTINUUM that runs in parallel with rehabilitation rather than a single decision at the end of it, and explicitly as an exercise in risk management. It recommends shared decision-making between clinician, athlete and coach, points to biopsychosocial models for individual factors, and to the Strategic Assessment of Risk and Risk Tolerance framework for synthesising the decision. It also states that research evidence to support return-to-sport decisions in clinical practice is scarce.

    Ardern CL, et al. — 2016 Consensus statement on return to sport from the First World Congress in Sports Physical Therapy, Bern.. Br J Sports Med, 2016. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2016-096278.

Bring notes about the motion that hurts

Write down when the ache began, which motion starts it, and how the joint feels the next morning. Bring old X-rays, a current medicine list, and notes about care that hasn't helped.

Ask which exam results explain the soreness, what each choice costs, and how much time it takes. You can reach the clinic team at (602) 837-PAIN.

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