In this SHAPE America podcast episode, James Russomano, MS, CSCS, USAW, program manager, sports safety at HSS Sports Medicine Institute, who discussed how physical education (PE) and public health are connected, injury prevention and HSS resources that can be implemented.

Russomano noted, “PE teachers are the frontlines of public health. They're the ones teaching students everything that they need to keep themselves safe and set them up for a life of successful physical activity.”

On return to sports following the pandemic, he noted, “It’s a tough time I think when we think about this return. We don’t want them [students] to get right into it and do something that leads them to sit on the bench for a few months because they tweaked something or got hurt. While I think every student has had some exposure to physical activity we all know that it’s not the same as any other year that they’ve ever had. We want to take them through the process of re-teaching those fundamental movements – the running, the jumping and the changing direction. We want to slowly integrate them back into the sports world so that they can do so as safely as possible.”

He continued, “Before COVID, HSS started developing PE lessons that we thought would be a valuable way for PE teachers to support their students. We wanted to give teachers these resources that could help give students the ability to better control their bodies, become more flexible, jump and land more safely, run and cut faster or more efficiently. We put together this curriculum over the last 15 months that does exactly that. It’s six lessons long. Each lesson is about 30-60 minutes and focuses on a different component called neuromuscular training. Neuromuscular training has been proven in countless studies across the world, especially in middle and high school aged athletes, to reduce injury risk and improve sports or physical activity performance.”

Listen to the full episode at Podomatic.com.