By In Touch Physiotherapy Exercise • Injury prevention • Muscles • News • Physiotherapy tips • Running • Short and long-term pain • Sport performance • Sports injuries 0 Comments

Calf strengthening – 5 good reasons why ?

shutterstock_328172750Calf strengthening is not only a common denominator in alot of lower limb rehabilitation programs, but also plays an important role in lower limb biomechanics, as well as a key aspect of injury prevention.

Here are five good reasons why calf strengthening is important.

  1. The calf helps with shock absorption on landing, in both running and jumping sports.
  2. The calf plays a role in forward and vertical propulsion with running and jumping sports respectively, hence strengthening will assist with power and performance.
  3. Calf strengthening is an important component of injury rehabilitation for a number of injuries directly related to the calf such as achilles tendon issues, calf muscle tears, or ankle sprains.
  4. Calf strengthening plays a major role in lower limb biomechanics, and is a common exercise when doing rehabilitation for knee, hip and lower back injuries. Increasing strength in the calf can assist in offloading the injured area.
  5. Calf strengthening helps to prevent achilles tendon issues and calf muscle tears, where fatigue and lack of strength may be a contributing factor to injury.

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By In Touch Physiotherapy Exercise • Injury prevention • Muscles • News • Physiotherapy tips • Short and long-term pain • Sport performance • Sports injuries • tendon • Uncategorized • Yoga 0 Comments

Pilates or Yoga – which one would be best for my injury recovery?

singapore-physio-pilatesAs physios it is common to get asked by clients what the difference is between pilates and yoga and would either be of benefit or detrimental to their injury and rehabilitation. With the popularity of both yoga and pilates in today’s society, people often want to know what the difference is?

Yoga involves a series of poses that create a stretch for your muscles and joints, and may either be sustained stretches or more flowing in nature between poses, creating more of a dynamic stretch. Read more

By In Touch Physiotherapy Exercise • Injury prevention • News • Physiotherapy tips • Short and long-term pain • Sport performance • Sports injuries 0 Comments

Why is there a big push towards dynamic stretching before exercise?

shutterstock_461974852Dynamic warm up/stretching mimics movements used in the sport or activity ahead. Dynamic warm up/stretching prepares the body for activity, and means your body is continuously moving even whilst stretching.

There has been a shift from static stretching before exercise, to dynamic stretching before exercise, with static stretching thought to have some negative effects on the exercise/sport to follow, such as reducing muscle strength, reducing muscle power and reducing explosive muscle performance.

So why the shift towards dynamic warm up/ stretching before exercise?

Dynamic warm up/stretching has a number of pre-workout benefits such as:

  • Elevating your heart rate;
  • Increasing your body temperature;
  • And stimulating your nervous system enhancing mind-muscle connection.

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By In Touch Physiotherapy Achilles • Exercise • Injury prevention • News • Physiotherapy tips • Running • Short and long-term pain • Sport performance • Sports injuries • Uncategorized 0 Comments

Self remedy tips for plantar fasciitis

shutterstock_117796435Plantar fasciitis or more appropriately termed plantar fasciopathy, is a common condition in the foot causing pain in the arch and/or heel. The plantar fascia is a thick fibrous band of tissue that runs from the heel to the toes and forms the arch of your foot acting as a natural shock absorber for the foot. Due to the nature of this fibrous tissue, it is not very elastic and limited in its capacity to stretch and elongate, thus with too much traction on the plantar fascia microtearing will occur.   Read more

By In Touch Physiotherapy Achilles • Exercise • Injury prevention • News • Physiotherapy tips • Short and long-term pain • Sports injuries 0 Comments

Pain in the ball of your foot – Morton’s neuroma

shutterstock_131393606Morton’s neuroma is a painful condition that affects the ball of your foot, and often feels like there is something in the ball of the foot, or that there is something in the shoe bunched up.

This nueroma is a thickening of the nerve tissue most commonly occurring between the third and fourth matatarsals (long bones in the foot), and occasionally between the second and third metatarsals. Involves a perineural fibrosis, where over time the sheath surrounding the nerve becomes irritated, inflamed and forms a thickened scar tissue around one of the nerves leading to your toes. Read more

By In Touch Physiotherapy Events • Exercise • Injury prevention • Knee Injuries • News • Physiotherapy tips • Running • Sport performance • Sports injuries 0 Comments

Marathon Tips

image006With the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon fast approaching, this is usually around the time we start to see injuries trickle into the clinic, where people are madly ramping up their mileage each week to ensure they are on target with their training plan or catching up for lost time and simply haven’t had the chance to train as planned.

With several other running events across Asia which happen all year round, here are some handy hints for distance running, injury prevention and enhancing performance.

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