by Casey de Langen, Physiotherapist
7 Benefits of Sports Physiotherapy
We live in a world where participating in sporting activities is a big part of many peoples lives.
According to the Australian Department of Health, more than 90% of adults have an interest in sports and roughly 11 million adults participate in sports each year along with 3 million children.
Participating in sports demands a lot from your mind and body, making sports physiotherapy a vital part of a successful sporting journey or career.
Many people tend to think that the only correct time to go see a sports physiotherapist is when they’re injured. Well - not true.
Continue reading below to find 7 benefits of Sports Physiotherapy:
1. Helps correct and improve technique
Whether you participate in crossfit, weight lifting, hurdles, swimming, soccer or any other sport, we can help you with your technique.
Having a good technique can help you go faster, jump higher and lift heavier loads, all while also preventing injury.
Technique is also one of those things that’s hard to evaluate for yourself, as looking in a mirror can’t show you all of the angles and even watching a video may not be able to show those tiny adjustments that need to be made.
We’ve helped many athletes with beneficial changes to their technique, and you’d be surprised how the smallest change can make a substantial improvement in their performance.
2. Specific training for you
As sports physiotherapists, we look at you as an individual with unique characteristics.
We do a full assessment of your biomechanics, your technique, strength, range of motion, coordination, balance and proprioception. This helps us identify exactly how we can help you reach your maximum potential.
For example, you or your coach may not notice that you have decreased ankle proprioception which could be impacting your performance, but we will know after our assessment. Then we will give you specific exercises to help improve your proprioception.
The result? Better performance, decreased chance of injury and a happy athlete and coach.
3. Recovery
We’ve all been there - it’s peak season, it feels like you’re training more than you sleep, and your body is exhausted, achy and stiff. You can barely get into your car or lift your coffee mug.
Sports physiotherapy can help you with general recovery even in the absence of injury. This includes soft tissue release, dry needling, taping, manipulation techniques and exercises to help maintain mobility and decrease stiffness.
This will also help you stay fresh for all that training and help prevent any injuries.
4. Injury prevention
A sports physiotherapist has the skill set to evaluate and assess the specific sport you’re doing, including the intensity, frequency and environment of your training sessions. This helps us identify various injury risks.
From this evaluation, we can provide you with exercises to combat those risks in order to prevent injury from occurring.
This includes a tailored warm-up routine that will help prepare you for the session, and a cool-down routine to help your body recover.
For more information on warm-up and cool-down routines, see our blog on static and dynamic stretching here.
5. Acute/on-site treatment
Sports physiotherapists are qualified to assess and treat acute injuries and are often present during matches, competitions and training sessions.
This ensures that if any injury occurs during a practice session or competition, we are right there and can start giving advice and managing the injury from the very beginning.
Acute on-site treatment is extremely important, as how you handle the injury in those initial moments after it happening are crucial and can either hinder your healing process, or it could help your recovery in the long run.
6. Rehabilitation
Athletes and sports people in general are never a fan of the word “rehab”, but many of our clients have enjoyed their rehab and have come out stronger on the other side.
This is because we do a full assessment of your injury and any other contributing factors that there may be. At Melbourne Sports Physiotherapy, we use both Strength Dynamometers, and the AxIT system to perform elite level strength assessments
Then we plan out a structured rehabilitation programme that not only focuses on healing your injury, but also on maintaining your fitness as much as possible and addressing any weak spots in your movements that could have contributed to your injury (strength, balance, stabilisation, proprioception etc.).
We make use of many techniques including dry-needling, joint manipulations, soft tissue release, myofascial release and many more.
7. Return to play and maintenance
A big part of the rehabilitation programme will be assessing you for return to play. These are assessments that we do to check if you would be ready to go back onto the field and compete, get back into the pool to race or return to the gym for that powerlifting competition.
We test your speed, agility, cutting maneuvers, balance, proprioception, strength, technique and anything else that you would need to get back out there.
Discussing with you about how you feel about returning to play at this stage can also help us to build your confidence, and we could refer you to a sports psychologist to get you mentally ready and prepared to be your best.
The tests we would conduct would also be specific to you and your sport which ensures that you’re physically ready and mentally confident.
Remember - we’re here to help you! We want to see you succeed in whichever sports you participate in.
So if you are in need of a sports physiotherapist to help you with any injury or concern - look no further, because we’re here and we would love to help you.
How can we help you?
At Melbourne Sports Physiotherapy our goal is to get you moving pain free as soon as possible.
But, we also want you to actually move better and live a healthier, more active and fulfilling life!
If your sports, fitness training or work has been wearing your body down, book in with one of our expert massage therapists so we can help you reduce your pain or stiffness.
If you are showing some signs of this condition or simply want help prevent this from happening in the future then book in with one of our highly experienced Remedial Massage Therapists today!
You can make an appointment by calling or booking online.
BOOK ONLINE NOW TO FIX YOUR PAIN