Sports medicine is generally employed as a comprehensive term that includes the general physiology of exercise, the prevention and treatment of sports-related injuries and disorders, the clinical use of exercise to improve health, and the optimal preparation of the competitive athlete.

The sports sciences can be defined as those natural scientific disciplines that can be applied to the theory and practice of athletic performance. This range of disciplines includes anatomy, with special emphasis on the musculoskeletal system; physics, with special emphasis on the biomechanics of movement; and physiology, which assesses the energy costs and efficiency of physical activities. The application of physiological principles to sportive exertion is usually referred to as “exercise physiology” a term that includes a wide array of more specialized physiological topics: the chemistry of muscle contraction, muscle fiber types, the mechanical efficiency of muscle contraction, and energy storage in the muscle; the functioning of the circulatory system during rest and exercise, as well as cardiac output and oxygen transport; the respiratory system, especially oxygen uptake during rest and exercise; and nutrition, with special emphasis on the energy metabolism of muscular exercise.

Sports medicine includes those theoretical and practical branches of medicine which investigate the influence of exercise, training and sport on healthy and ill people, as well as the effects of lack of exercise, to produce useful results for prevention, therapy, rehabilitation and the athlete.

Some of the important aspects of sports medicine are as follows:

· Medical treatment of injuries and illnesses.

· Medical examination before starting a sport to detect any damages which could be worsened by the sport.

· Medical performance investigation to assess the performance capacity of the heart, circulation, respiration, metabolism, and skeletal musculature.

· Performance diagnosis specific to the type and nature of the sport.

· Medical advise on the athlete’s lifestyle and nutrition.

· Medical assistance in developing optimal training methods.

· Scientifically based control of training.

The use of science in athletic performance is a frequently discussed issue. The science of human athletic performance is as old as sportive endeavor itself, in that athletes and their trainers have always adopted systematic practices or techniques to improve their levels of performance. The ambition to extend performance limits appears to be a basic feature of any sports culture, and such aspirations can thrive even in the absence of quantifiable performance norms. Thus ancient Greek athletes trained in accordance with a four-day cycle and pursued athletic diets to reach higher levels of competitive achievements.

As sport has become increasingly popular and the medical hazards of sport have intensified; physiologists and physicians have together created a modern science of human performance that now aims at both improving the health of large numbers of people and extending the limits of human athletic achievement.