Injuries can interrupt your life when you least expect it. One minute you’re enjoying all that life has to offer and the next, you’re laid up in pain and cancelling all your plans.
You can’t prevent all injuries. There will always be bad drivers who cause car crashes or ill-timed tackles on the footy field.
But you can prevent some injuries with Restart Exercise Physiology’s injury prevention service.
Injury prevention at Restart Exercise Physiology
Accredited exercise physiologists (AEPs) specialise in clinical exercise prescription for many different purposes including preventing injuries.
Our injury prevention service helps to identify and condition those areas of your body that could be prone to injury due to your lifestyle, chosen sport or biomechanics.
Understanding injuries
Before we talk about preventing injuries, it’s useful to understand how they commonly occur.
Some are the result of a sudden traumatic event like a collision or a fall. Injuries like this can happen in moments of sporting glory or in very mundane activities like tripping over a tree root while carrying the washing basket inside.
Many injuries, though, happen due to overuse. You know the story…there’s a niggling pain in your shoulder every time you swim freestyle, but you’re trying to improve your lap time so you keep going. Your knees hurt when you run, but it’s the best way you know to release stress so you keep pounding the pavement. Your back and neck hurt at the end of each day spent working on your computer, but you’re back there the next day because you have to do your job.
Many of our habits mean that we overuse some of our soft tissues and underuse others. Poor posture is a big culprit here. It’s so easy to end up hunched over your desk or slouched on the sofa.
Sports frequently require repetitive movements – like gripping a tennis racket – that can cause a build-up of small injuries that eventually become significant enough to stop play.
You may also be more prone to certain injuries because of your body’s underlying biomechanics – the way your muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments work together. Your body may try to compensate for poor biomechanics by tightening your muscles, for example, which can make them more prone to injury. Your exercise physiologist can assess your biomechanics and prescribe personalised mobility and conditioning exercises to reduce your injury risk.
Your injury prevention journey
Mobility Appraisal
- Joint health and mobility
- Muscle strength
- Lifestyle
- Posture
- Medical history
- Goals
Personalised treatment plan
- Conditioning exercises to improve your balance, flexibility and strength
- Postural advice
- Advice to improve biomechanics
Regular
review
- Adapting your plan as your physical condition improves
Your personalised treatment plan
Your treatment plan will depend on your goals, medical history and physical condition. It will include a program of conditioning exercises tailored to your needs. Done regularly, these exercises will help to improve your overall function and reduce your risk of injury.
Who should think about injury prevention?
No-one wants an injury, but you’re at increased risk of experiencing one if you already have:
- Knee pain
- Lower back pain
- Shoulder pain
- Neck pain
- Previous injuries that you’re recovering from
- Stiffness and soreness after exercise
- Biomechanical problems that can make you more prone to both overuse and traumatic injuries
- A desire to improve your athletic performance – training too hard too soon without proper conditioning can lead to injury.
At Restart Exercise Physiology, we love helping you stay in good shape. We’ll happily help you recover from injury, but we’d much rather help you avoid the grief of injury in the first place by using evidence-based treatments to prevent injury.