Why see a Sports Therapist

Why see a Sports Therapist

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"Unlock your athletic potential with the help of a sports therapist. Find out how in our latest blog! #SportsRecovery"

Could your sports performance be better?

Do you feel like you are constantly injured?

Do you feel like you cannot try a new sport due to a niggling injury you have?

Every athlete has the potential to improve and optimise their sports performance. Footballers, dancers, runners, HYROX athletes, rugby players, hockey players, yogi's and all other athletes can benefit from a personalised rehab programme, targeting areas they need to improve to improve their overall performance.

Optimising performance

Often, when thinking of improving performance, people think they need to be faster or stronger or can throw further, or kick more accurately. Whilst this is improving performance, being able to physically meet and exceed match demands is another area of sports performance which cannot be forgotten, as this is when musculoskeletal injury risk is higher. By using strength and conditioning techniques backed up by current literature, injury risk can be reduced at the same time as improving sports performance.

Meeting and exceeding match demands comes from knowing what skills your sport requires, and specifically, training to be able to efficiently complete high-risk skills, allowing your body to learn to cope with and adapt to those actions in a competitive situation. An example of this is if you strengthen your quadriceps and hamstring muscles, the risk of sustaining a knee injury is reduced, as they are better equipped to stabilise the joint.

Improving performance is not only about training the sport-specific skills and getting stronger. It also involves learning how the food we eat and the rest we get impacts our strength, endurance, recovery, well-being and performance. Without effectively fueling your body, it is harder for soft tissue to have the energy needed to control movements and avoid injury. This is similar to sleep. Without sleep, your soft tissue cannot recover well enough to be able to work as efficiently as possible, potentially leading to injury. Sports Therapists aim to target as many factors that can affect sports performance and injury risk as possible, creating a recipe for success for every individual athlete.

Working with a sports therapist

A Sports Therapist will assess your movement ability and see if there are any injuries that need addressing or vulnerabilities in the soft tissue. This allows a personalised rehab plan suited to your lifestyle and goals to be created. We will help you with injury prevention, niggling injuries and strength and conditioning to unlock your sporting potential and level up your performance. We also educate about the importance of nutrition, sleep, rest and recovery as part of your training programmes.

As we assess, diagnose and treat sporting injuries, rehab plans are created for the injury, but also to improve other aspects of sport performance or overall performance simultaneously. An example of this is an athlete who has an ankle injury. We will rehab that injury so it is strong and stable, working on the athlete's agility so their soft tissue is able to cope with the demands of a change of direction. At the same time, we can work on how well the athlete is able to change direction, increasing the efficiency of the movement so it can be performed at higher speeds, improving overall sporting performance.

By seeing a sports therapist, you will optimise your sports performance by making your soft tissue more robust and able to cope with competitive demands, as well as address niggles or injuries, and learn more about the importance of a balanced workload to improve your performance and reach your sporting goals.