Ankle injury rehab – walking with intent

Running is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby, yet running causes many people discomfort or problems.  Few runners won’t have had some sort of ankle injury.  From ankle sprains to achilles tendinopathies there are quite a number of tissues you can injure around the ankle. Therefore we aim to make our rehab programs in such a way that you aren’t simply out of pain but truly fit to run again. It is the goal of rehab to ensure that you can engage in thoughtless, fearless movement.  To make sure that everything you do enjoyable and pain-free. Continue reading “Ankle injury rehab – walking with intent”

My glutes aren’t firing?

“My glutes aren’t firing” is something that I hear all too often. What makes you think that your glutes aren’t firing? How did you come to this conclusion? Did a therapist or trainer tell you? Did you read it on the internet that sitting at a desk all day will mean your glutes aren’t firing? It is then associated as the cause of a number of probl

ems from back pain to illiotibial band syndrome.

 

glute bridge exercise

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Lower limb injury assessment

The first step in any injury assessment is what previous injuries do you have. The biggest predictor of future injury lies in your injury history. As a result looking into your injury history will play an important roll in deciding on what needs to be done. If you have previously injured your ankle, knee or hip these are areas we need to investigate in the injury assessment. We do this becasue of the scale of the impact they have on the way you move. Two of the more important things that we are looking out for in the clinic are asymmetries and pain.When we are assessing movement we are looking to see both how good it is and does it cause pain. Continue reading “Lower limb injury assessment”

I keep spraining my ankle, it must be weak

This isn’t an uncommon thing to hear from anyone unfortunate enough to suffer regular ankle injuries. The likely hood that you have weak ankles is very low even if you are spraining one or both of them regularly. The cause of the problem is more likely one of poor communication between the brain and the muscles surrounding your ankle which results in a loss of what we call proprioception. Continue reading “I keep spraining my ankle, it must be weak”

How to manage runners knee

Runners’ Knee is a common complaint with runners. 10% of runner’s will experience some sort of knee pain in any given year. Given it’s so common what causes it and what can you do about it?

Generally most injuries runner pick up are of a “repetitive strain” nature and runner’s knee is no exception. Given the nature of running, this isn’t really that big a surprise. There aren’t really many demands in terms of changing direction or speed. It is very much about simply putting one foot in front of the other. Continue reading “How to manage runners knee”

Achilles tendinopathy – what can you do to keep running

Achilles tendinopathy is one of the more common running injuries and I mentioned it previously in post TOP 5 RUNNING INJURIES. As I mentioned there it is pretty much an overuse injury that can be avoided, for the most part though not always, by good programming. If you gradually increase your training load it is possible to avoid overuse injuries as you are training within your capacity to recover before the next training session. In doing this once you get to the tough part of the program the hard training in itself has a protective mechanism, as described by Tim Gabbett here.

running up hill

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Anterior Knee Pain

Patellofemoral pain can be thought of where pain is present in and surrounding the tissues between the patella and the femur. The cause of the pain can be something of a mystery as it rarely develops quickly and isn’t the result of a traumatic incident the way a ligament tear is. The symptoms are often made worse by, though not exclusively, activities like squatting, lunging, kneeling, going down stairs or running downhill. In-other words relatively high load activities that put a lot of stress on or through the area. in addition to this sitting for long periods where the knee is flexed can also cause the symptoms to get worse.

PFPS Continue reading “Anterior Knee Pain”