Sports Injury Management
Sports physio: your partner in injury management and performance
Are you dealing with a sports injury or ready to enhance your athletic performance? At Altaira Health & Wellbeing Centre, our sports physio services are designed to help you recover, prevent future injuries, and achieve your goals. Whether you're an elite athlete or a weekend warrior, our tailored approach ensures you get back to your best, stronger than ever.
Steps to overcoming injuries
We at Altaira recognise that people come in all different shapes and sizes, and as such exercise plans need to be tailored to each individual. There is not one gold standard of exercise therapy, and what works well for one person may not work for another. We will develop an individualised exercise plan which specifically considers:
- Goals of exercise (e.g. increase strength, restore mobility, lose weight, etc.)
- Current level of fitness
- Type of sport, activity, or work involved in
- Motivation for different forms of exercise (weights, walking, cycling, etc.), as this will influence an individual’s level of compliance
As well as the obvious physical benefits, exercise also provides psychological and social benefits in terms of better mental health outcomes and community engagement.
Pacing vs Boom-Bust
Injuries will often occur from doing too much too soon after doing too little for too long. While we all know exercise and fitness is important, often the way we go about it is not.
In trying to implement any change, especially where health and wellbeing are concerned, it is important to implement graduated adjustments. In doing so, you would be “pacing” your way towards positive change, and it is more likely to be longer lasting and effective.
Pacing is where small incremental changes are used to increase your level of physical activity. For example, if your goal was to be able to run for 10km, you may start off with 2km and slowly increase this distance over a number of weeks or months (depending on your base level of activity), to reach your eventual goal.
This directly contrasts to what we refer to as the “boom-bust cycle”. This is the scenario where we get fed up with not exercising or maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and we feel we need to do something about it right now!
While there is nothing wrong with this sentiment, trying to implement change too quickly can lead to injuries and further inactivity. Using the example from above, this would be if you immediately tried to go for a 10km run after not having done so for a long time.
Your body would not be used to such a high level of physical activity and the resultant shock to your body could result in injuries. This in turn leads you to actually decrease your level of exercise as you recover. Then after taking time to recover, the boom-bust cycle starts again.
While pacing may seem slow, it will lead to a better result over time. This is as true for an activity like running, as it is for acute (short term), or chronic (long-term) injury recovery.
A qualified physiotherapist at Altaira can assist in setting out a program which is specific for you, and assist you to achieve short-, medium- and long-term goals with a graduated exercise plan.