If you have injured yourself in your chosen sport, it is advisable to seek professional care as soon as possible. An example is following an ankle sprain, where your tendency may be to just sit it out until the injury gets better, and then attempt to return to your sports activity as soon as possible. There are very good reasons for not following this line of management. Let’s look at the facts. When a soft tissue injury takes place, the tear or damage to soft tissue structures is an unknown quantity. Until you have the area properly checked out, you cannot establish the degree of damage that has taken place. Why is it so important to establish?
- If the damage is mild, you may ignore this and return to your sporting activity after a couple of days rest. What may happen is the pain may be absent, but the injury may have caused weakness in the architecture of the injured tissues, and may be prone to even more damage , on your return to activity.
- Soft tissue injuries are more than often about the failure of the injured tissue to adapt to a particular load placed on the tissue. I.e.: You may have soft tissue A, B, C, D, and E. Tissue A and B and D and E say “Here’s a load, let’s go for iron man!” Tissue C Says “Hang on guys, I am not adapting to this new load, I need a rest to get my strength up!” Have one guess who is going to win? Which is basically speaking, where the start of injuries takes place.
- There may be training approaches to time management and technique that need to be explored. We can carry out a Hip2Toe Plus sports injury assessment at our Cairns podiatry surgery, and arrange a sports management program to treat, manage and prevent further injury.
- Sports injuries can easily become chronic if they are not properly and professionally managed. An example that is regularly encountered involves sports biomechanics. When you are caring out a sporting activity ,
- Some injuries of the foot and lower limb require specific management strategies to prevent further injury. This is especially important if you are a professional sports person, as your income and career length may be dependent on preventing further chronicity or damage from taking place. Examples of Hip2Toe Plus physical therapy for sports injuries program include:
- Full injury assessment, including vascular, neurological, dermatological and biomechanical assessment of the injury site.
- X-Ray and investigative ultrasound to establish soft tissue damage and bone involvement. (These are bulk billed through Medicare.)
- Strapping of the affected region if required.
- Massage and gentle manipulation of bone, muscle, ligament and tendon structures.
- Therapeutic ultrasound treatment where required.
- Stretching programs for the affected region.
- Rehabilitation muscle re-education programs.
- Joint proprioception work to improve balance and coordination while recovering.
- Full assessment of prevention strategies to prevent re-injury or further injuries from taking place.
- Assessment for Hip2Toe Plus professional foot orthotics at our Cairns Podiatry surgery, to wear in your sports shoes, business shoes and school shoes to protect your feet from further injury. (Very often when the cause of the injury has been linked with biomechanical foot and lower limb function, the risk of further injury can be reduced, by wearing proper orthotics of this type.
So there can be many reasons that delay is taking place in the healing of injuries including the following, which we can arrange full assessment for:
Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, heel pain, metatarsal stress fractures, bunion pain, ankle sprains, knee pain, shin splints, hammer toe pain, calf tears and posterior lower limb pain, muscle strains in the foot and lower limbs, illio-tibial region pain, ballet injuries, equinus state, fractured sesamoid, hamstring tendonitis, heel spur syndrome, leg length discrepancy, overuse injuries, Osteochondritis desicans, pain in the forefoot, Retrocalcaneal exostosis, runners knee, tibial/fibular stress fractures, sesamoiditis, bursitis, capsulitis, neuroma’s.
Our company is a member of Sports Medicine Australia, and we have 17 years of experience treating local, state, national and international sports participants from all areas of sport, dancing and martial arts.