Sports injuries

Sporting activities put the human body under huge forces. When the average person runs for 1 hour, each foot strikes the ground 10,000 times. It is no surprise then that runners and other athletes develop painful syndromes. In sport small abnormalities like stiff joints in the foot, muscle weakness in the hip or stiff calf muscles can create large problems after enough repetition. A stiff joint in the ankle can, for example, reduce shock absorption and cause more force to be transferred to the knee, hip and spine.

The job of the physiotherapist in sporting injuries is to understand the biomechanics of the human body sufficiently to be able to identify these small abnormalities and know how to correct them.

Common treatment for sporting injuries include;

• Biomechanical analysis
• Joint manipulation
• Joint mobilisation
• Taping to offload painful structures
• TENS for pain relief
• Education regarding exercise modification programs
• Reeducation of movement to reduce the stress on painful joints and muscle
• Soft tissue treatment (including soft tissue release and myofacial techniques)
• Foot taping or orthotics to correct foot motion

Injury Prevention & Performance Screening »