Your Vibrant Spirit Sports physio treatment will incorporate thorough assessment, diagnosis and treatment and may include some of the techniques below to speed up your recovery and return to sport:
All injuries, whether pre/post operatively, sporting or occupational require some form of corrective exercise. This aids the healing process and allows the body to be restored to a better state than before it was injured.
Any corrective exercise is prescribed specifically for you and can be a combination of bodyweight or machine/weight assisted protocols dependent on your injury. We can also help with gait (walking) re-education and functional rehabilitation to make you strong enough to deal with the body’s everyday stresses at home and outside. Your rehabilitation will be relevant to you and your individual needs, allowing you to quickly get back to everything that you enjoy in your life and give you more confidence and independence at home.
This taping method is widely used in both amateur and professional sports environments. It aids lymphatic drainage, and can help to reduce recovery time from injury. It aims to provide a supported and more free range of movement during injury, supporting the body as it heals itself, and biomechanically by promoting healthy and functional movement during the natural healing process. It is a useful adjunct to other treatment methods and offers ongoing help between treatment sessions as it can stay on for many days.
Physiological benefits of Kinesio Tape:
- It can significantly reduce pain by offloading tissues
- It can support muscles by enabling more normal movement
- It can aid in the removal of swelling by reducing the amount of lymphatic fluid congestion
- It can help to correct joint misalignment
- It can help align a muscle or joint into a proper position for rehabilitative exercises
- It can assist a weak muscle by placing it back into the correct biomechanical position
- It can improve awareness and give proprioceptive feedback to the brain to help to improve posture and general alignment.
Different massage techniques can be very beneficial for compromised tissues to help with relaxation of the patient as well as working stresses and strains out of the muscles, improving overall health and feelings of wellbeing.
A Deep Tissue Massage (or Sports Massage) can be aimed at deeper tissues to work with muscles and fascia as well as with ligaments and tendons. Benefits include:
- Realigning muscle fibres
- Breaking down adhesions/scar tissue
- Stimulating circulation and therefore the healing process
- Restoring balance, aiding posture and increasing movement within joints.
- Preparation for exercise as well as faster recovery post event/training
Frictions are useful for massaging specific small areas of injury. These are generally used to break down scarred or thickened areas and can provide immediate improvements to movement and pain.
Trigger Point Therapy is when direct pressure is put on a “knot” or adhesion in the muscle for a few seconds and is then removed. This can feel uncomfortable initially but allows for the realignment of muscle fibres and increases circulation to the area to bring in oxygen and nutrients and help to flush put any toxins or waste products. This will help to reduce pain and general muscle tension.
Lymphatic Drainage is a form of massage that stimulates the body’s lymphatic system. This aids the body’s ability to eliminate waste and toxins, while improving metabolism and boosting the immune system. Unlike other massage treatments, lymphatic drainage utilises a very light pressure combined with soft pumping movements in the direction of the lymph nodes. This can be particularly useful post operatively especially if lymph nodes have been removed.
As part of any treatment session, we will assess your posture and biomechanics in order to get to the root of your injury. Poor posture can often contribute to the cause of your injury or make you more susceptible to future injury, modifying these underlying behaviours can be helpful long term.
Stretching exercises are used to return soft tissues to an optimal level of flexibility and mobility and are an integral part of any strengthening programme.