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The Hongkong Bank Foundation Continuing Coach Education Programme (CCEP) had its 5^th seminar held in early February in 2009/10 since its inauguration in 1992. With the theme of "Causes and Prevention of Athletes' Low Back Injuries", it attracted about 220 coaches and sports enthusiasts to attend.

With over 20 years of international experience in sports medicine, medical services and rehabilitation research, the speaker Dr Raymond Li is currently the Sport Physiotherapist (Coordinator) of the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI). He pointed out that asymmetry muscle imbalance of the back was one of the main causes of lower spinal injury in sports, and this was particularly prone to occur in sports, which involved only one side of the body.

Dr Li further explained, "Athletes of one-sided sports including racquet games, golf, archery, shooting, tenpin bowling and hockey tend to focus their training on the involved side of the body and ignore the other side. Eventually, back muscle imbalance occurred. This would even distort the normality of the biological curves of the spine causing additional stress on a particular spinal joint. While on the opposite side of the back, muscles are too weak to protect the back from external stress, causing unnecessary trauma to the spine. Though these phenomena may not directly cause the injury, yet their existence may well predispose to some sort of back injuries. Therefore coaches and athletes are strongly advised to train symmetrically while strengthening the back."

Dr Li also brought up one key point for coaches when addressing to athletes' injuries. "There is an increasing trend that athletes may not be injured from their core sports event, but from other occasions, say an athletics athlete is injured when playing ball games or a swimmer is injured during jumping. Coaches need to consider this when stipulating the training and rehabilitation programmes for athletes," Dr Li added.

Dr Li successfully aroused the interest of all attendants by his lively presentation and demonstration. "It's a very systematic and detailed presentation. Thanks to Dr Li whose explanation is so clear and useful to both coaches and athletes, providing us with the fundamental but important information on the low back pain. I'll pay more attention to our rowers' activities so as to minimize the injury in daily life," said Ip Chi-kit, Chairman of Coaching Committee of the Hong Kong, China Rowing Association.

Fung Suet-yee, both an elite athlete and a coach in tenpin bowling echoed Ip's views and added, "Every time I join the seminar under the CCEP, I get new insight on coaching. Through this seminar, I have learnt more in the area of sports medicine and will make sure not to ignore any side of the body when arranging training programmes for my athletes. I hope more seminars or workshops can be organised in the future."

The Hongkong Bank Foundation has been supporting the Hong Kong Coach Education Programme with over HK$21 million since 1992. Organised by the HKCC and administered by the Hong Kong Sports Institute, the Programme aims at providing coaches the opportunity to acquire theoretical and practical knowledge as well as formal accreditation. This CCEP is one of the coach training activities of the Programme, aiming to provide opportunities for accredited coaches to update their theoretical knowledge and practical expertise, maintain the quality of accredited coach and provide a channel for coaches to communicate with one another through a series of workshops and seminars.