Sports management is much more similar to more common business management than what people think. Ryan Grigson often says that the only real different is that you have much more fun with sports management than with business management. However, preparing for matches is something that is normally not appreciated. If you get in the higher leagues, it becomes much more difficult to manage athletes and staff members, together with business responsibilities.
The importance of preparations and training is always vital in sports. This is equally as important as actually playing. Without proper warming up and training, building proper playing conditions and managing those conditions, errors happen. Having players sidelined with injuries has a really strong impact on how the team plays and on the spirit of the entire team.
One thing that should be understood about sports is that the team is always much more important than the individual. However, in order to have a team, there is a need to go through condition management and training. The top players are always interested in showing off the talents they have and competing. However, this cannot be done without training.
Sports managers need to balance everything. Going through proper training always prevents injuries. At the same time, overexposure increases injuries. One of the most common examples of an athlete simply playing and training too much is that of worldwide tennis sensation Rafael Nadal. He had to decide not to play in the Davis Cup due to exhaustion.
No matter how we look at things, sports management is really similar to business management. You need to slow down nice activities while incentivizing hard preparations. It is vital that you guarantee the fact that conditions are constant and that people are in the right shape, similarly to how the business needs to properly operate for products and services to be properly delivered.
So what can sports managers do in order to prevent injuries? Many different things can be mentioned. We are faced with many different actions that are needed based on sport, training routine, goals and more. Sports managers need to balance all this in order to guarantee athlete safety. At the end of the day, you cannot get results with an injured player. This is what is much more important than the business side of things.
While doing everything that is possible to prevent injuries, the business side of things can interfere and become more important than anticipated. This is especially true for those clubs that are struggling. Unfortunately, many sports managers without much experience make mistakes. They can actually push players and lead to injuries.
Sports managers need to carefully monitor training and player condition. In most cases simple changes are necessary in order to guarantee safety. These have to be a top priority for every single manager involved in sports. When proper attention is not put on player development, it is really easy to end up faced with the unwanted situation in which someone gets injured. This is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when.
