Do your knees “crack and grind” when squatting or using stairs

Knee crackingThe patellofemoral joint is part of your knee involving the knee cap (patella) and the thigh bone (femur). The patella sits inside a grooved surface on the distal end of the femur. The patella should glide up and down in this groove smoothly, but can sometimes be misaligned and caused maltracking. The quadriceps muscle holds the patella and helps control the movement in the groove.

Read more

Ankle sprains can often lead to chronic knee pain

physio-ankle-treatmentAnkle sprains can often lead to chronic knee pain such as patellofemoral (kneecap) pain, jumper’s knee, runner’s knee.

Ankle sprains can alter ankle joint mechanics and cause reduced ankle movement (particularly dorsiflexion of the ankle). This reduction in ankle dorsiflexion causes increased valgus movement on the knee in functional tasks/ sports. Read more

Glute Bridge: Exercise for stronger butt muscles

Check out this glute bridging exercise, an effective way to strengthen your butt muscles.

Glutes play an important role in many running and impact sports for speed, power and stability. Strengthening your glutes is key for sport performance and also assists with injury prevention for many lower limb and lower back complaints.

 

Lower back pain and golfers

golfResearch suggests that the incidence of insidious low back pain (LBP) in golfers may occur as a result of factors such as cumulative load from high volume swing practice; lateral shearing forces created on the downswing by trunk side flexion and trunk rotation; an over-rotation of the trunk on the backswing, and /or core muscle dysfunction, to name a few.

Read more

Hydration in sport

physiotherapy - hydrationHydration in sport is vital to replace the loss of fluid that our body perspires, which controls our body temperature as we utilize energy. If we do not replace this fluid we overheat and dehydrate, which may lead to a decrease in performance and an increased risk of injury.

To minimize dehydration, athletes need to drink enough in exercise to match their sweat loss. Read more