Competitive athletes learn from their first day of training that in order to become better, stronger, and faster, they need to train harder than they have ever done before. They also know that overtraining is a real possibility, this creates a delicate balance between training hard and getting the proper rest.

Quiz: If you’ve just hurt yourself — for example, sprained your ankle or tweaked your shoulder hitting a tennis serve  — do you ice the injury or apply heat to it?

Or how about chronic soreness or swelling from conditions like osteoarthritis or lower back pain? What’s more effective: heat or cold?

These are questions many people have, and a surprising number aren’t certain about the answer.

In recent years, the general public has become more educated about the dangers of concussions than at any previous time in history. This increased awareness may be attributed in part to advances in sports medicine, improvements in diagnosis and treatment, and increased media coverage — particularly of major sports stars, both past and present, who have suffered career-threatening head injuries.

A head injury is defined generally as trauma to the cranium (skull), scalp, or the brain. The two basic categories of traumatic head injury are open head injuries, in which the skull is broken or pierced, or closed head injuries, in which the skull remains closed/unbroken.

More than one million high school athletes play football in the United States each year. The sport is characteristically exciting, fast-paced, and physically rough, ensuring that every player will regularly experience all manner of bumps and bruises during their season.

A high school sports physical or athletic physical — sometimes called a pre-participation exam (PPE) — assesses whether teenage athletes are in good enough health to practice and compete in sports. Most states in the U.S., including Texas, require some kind of annual sports physical. Here's what athletes and parents need to know.