Injury Prevention & Performance Optimization Screening

The ‘holy grail’ of physiotherapy is the search for injury prevention strategies, in recent years there has been an explosion of research in this field and as a result it is now possible to predict with confidence when an individual is susceptible to injury.

‘It is now possible to predict with confidence when an individual is susceptible to injury’

The answer lies not in assessing individual body parts but by looking at the machine as a whole. By assessing specific movement patterns it is possible to identify restrictions, dysfunctions and asymmetries in the way an individual moves. If your body cannot perform a movement because it is inflexible or does not have the required core strength then it will adapt or compensate in some way. It is this compensation that leads over time to muscle imbalance and to abnormal force generation around a joint; this in turn leads to inappropriate wear and tear and injury. Identifying asymmetries in the way a body moves has become vital in the prevention of injury, many consider asymmetrical movement to be the leading cause of injury. It causes an uneven distribution of force to build up in soft tissue. It is areas of high stress where micro-trauma occurs causing pain, muscle dysfunction and injury.

‘Compensation strategies lead to excessive wear and tear’

It is widely accepted that muscle fatigue causes injury. Looking at the statistics of football and rugby matches confirms this; the vast majority of injuries occurs in the last 10 minutes of each half, when muscles are less able to protect joints because they are exhausted and do not function properly. Compensation strategies cause muscles to work in a sub-optimal way, this means that they are working much harder than they need to, this inevitably causes then to become exhausted far quicker than they should, again reducing their ability to protect joints, causing injury. By correcting abnormal movement patterns we can reduce the load on the muscle and ensure it functions in the optimum environment, this also improves performance »

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