Often, we are motivated towards a fitness routine we enjoy, be it the daily ritual at the gym or yoga studio, the weekly scuttle around the tennis court, or even a guilt-driven run around the block.
Time and time again, we struggle with sustaining this consistency due to our enslavement to work, personal commitments, or a new/old injury.
It gets frustrating seeing how far we’ve progressed, only to regress on our fitness goals.
Let me explain further by thinking about this comparison. When we experience a gradual onset head ACHE and feel some pain, we don’t call it a head INJURY and certainly we do not rush off to the doctor, receive some strong medications and get some scans of our brain. We generally think about what the triggers of that headache are and try to address them. It may be drinking more water, getting more quality sleep, having improved nutrition, being less sedentary, taking some exercise or decreasing the stress in our lives.
Written by Michael Bushell, Senior Physiotherapist
” I suffered from a large rectus diastisis (abdominal separation) after having my twins and have worked hard on core strengthening Pilates Exercises. If done correctly with good positioning these are very effective in strengthening the abdominal core muscles again.”
Hip weakness is often neglected but is crucial to be identified especially for a chronically sprained ankle that is not improving. Hip weakness may have developed since the very acute stage of your injury when you walked in a compensatory movement pattern to avoid putting weight on your injured ankle. If the hip or gluteal muscles continue to stay weak at the later stage, it would put extra stress and continue to irritate your ankle.
A sprained ankle is a very common injury that overstretches or tears the ligaments around the ankle. Check out the tests recommended by our physiotherapist Yi Jing below to see if your ankles, calf, and hips function well. Contact us for help if you have difficulty identifying the cause of your chronic ankle pain.
Tennis elbow or Lateral Epicondylosis is an overuse injury. It occurs when the muscles and tendons in your forearm are strained due to repetitive or strenuous activity.
Research now suggests the best way to treat tennis elbow is with physiotherapy under a progressive controlled eccentric loading exercise programme. That is subjecting the tendon to gradual loading movements to stimulate the healing process. These types of loads result in a change of the tissue structure leading to repair. Check out below to learn more about tennis elbow with our senior physiotherapist, Kathryn.