After graduating in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Montse Ribas specialised in family medicine, but regular practice of sport and being in contact with many sportsmen and women finally led her to dedicate herself to Sports Medicine.

First of all, it is necessary to contact your doctor or a health professional, because if there are underlying pathologies, contraindications must be ruled out. Practicing sport is important because it reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases, keeps you elastic and so on. Measures such as a good diet and regular exercise are the first step in combating chronic diseases.

Injuries are avoidable if you work within your heart rate range and listen to your body. If you don’t work at more than 100% of your heart rate for too long or without proper shoes and equipment or warm-up. If you do a sudden exercise that goes beyond your capabilities and you don’t listen to your body, that’s when injuries occur. You have to work with sensations and with a heart rate monitor. You have to know where your maximum is.

Stress tests are recommended and at a certain age a cardiac ultrasound should be performed.

Most federated sport (football, basketball, swimming, etc.) does. It is recommended to do stress tests and at a certain age a cardiac ultrasound should be done. It is true that perhaps there are collective sports that only play and do not give importance to physical work.

It is difficult to practice elite sport without pain because they push their bodies to the limit. Pain becomes chronic. Athletes may have all the tools in the world, but their schedules are very tight and this ends up taking its toll. A professional lives from competition and sometimes they are even the ones who say they are better than they are to compete again.

I think that we have to vindicate the fact that the role of the sports doctor is not only in the context of sport. We are useful for many other things. We prescribe physical exercise, for example, to determine what type of exercise is useful for a hypertensive or a diabetic. Just as a family doctor prescribes drugs, a sports doctor prescribes physical exercise.

I think we still have a culture that people come for check-ups only because otherwise they can’t compete. But a sports doctor doesn’t only do stress tests or sports follow-up check-ups, he also visits, for example, musicians for finger or shoulder injuries. In fact, in Terrassa there is a musicians’ clinic specialised in detecting specific pathologies in artistic disciplines.