You don’t have to be an elite athlete to need Sports Osteopathy. Both athletes and individuals who play regular sports are prone to develop an injury from playing various sports such as tennis, golf, football, basketball and athletics.
Common injuries that occur from these sports and are seen in the clinic include:
– Tennis elbow
– Tarsal tunnel Syndrome
– Dislocation
– Sprained, strained and fractured ankles
– Achillies tendonitis
– Herniated Disc
– Knee Injuries
– Dislocation
Sports injuries can often be caused from overuse and over training, such as runner’s knee or tennis elbow where the player pushes their body to the limit. These injuries can also occur due to under training or poor training practices.
If you are not stretching or having a good warm up before you start you may cause yourself an injury as the body is not prepared for the exercise.
Proper sports injuries management, rehabilitation, and advice can be sought from the expertise of Osteopaths. Treatment for a sports injury usually will depend on how severe the injury is and which part of you body that has been affected.
Treatment goals include:
– Getting you back to sport or work quicker
– Improving your performance
– Relieving your pain quicker
– Reducing your scar tissue formation
Osteopathy treatment techniques may include:
– Ice and/or heat therapy
– Joint mobilisation and manipulation techniques to increase the length and strength of muscles
– Soft tissue massages to relax tight muscles, decrease swelling, reduce tissue adhesions, or pain relief
– Exercise prescription to enhance balance and co-ordination
– Stretching, muscles can become tight during periods of inactivity following an injury. Stretching can help loosen these tight muscles, thus, improving your range of motion (ROM). ROM exercises can help improve or maintain your joint range of motion. By performing ROM exercise whenever possible, you can prevent your joints and muscle from becoming stiff. Range of motion exercises may also be combined with strengthening exercises once you have improved strength.
– Strengthening, being inactive for a long time can make your muscles weak. Strengthening them is important to achieve independence in movement. Strengthening exercises can help you maintain strength of your uninjured muscles and improve strength of your weakened muscles.
– Patient education, is one of the important aspects of Osteopathy management to help you to learn self-care. This may be in the form of exercises, strapping/bracing, learning how to modify your activity to reduce over-stressing your injured part and learning self-treatment strategies.
If you have injured yourself and would like to book an appointment you can call the clinic on 9908 2844, or alternatively you can book an appointment online with us here.