Improve performance after a sports injury

Understand how to reduce your vulnerability to re-injury. Become a better athlete to avoid future overuse injuries and keep you doing the activities you enjoy.

Understand how to reduce your vulnerability to re-injury. Become a better athlete to avoid future overuse injuries and keep you doing the activities you enjoy.

No pain; a return to training; followed by a resumption of all normal activities; this is what most sports injured men and women want. Unfortunately the reality is often lingering pain, incomplete and unsatisfactory rehabilitation and a premature return to training. To compound the problem a strength and conditioning program is restarted that is inadequate for a recovering athlete. If you take such a course of action following injury it will leave you vulnerable to reinjury and you will soon plateau in your performance and fitness progression.

The Alternative
When Danny Cipriani suffered a terrible ankle injury a couple of weeks ago (May 2008) playing for Wasps many would have observed the incident with horror. Sure enough he will miss the England Rugby tour to New Zealand and will be out of action for many months. However the reaction of his captain Lawrence Dallaglio following the ankle dislocation was not one of doom and gloom but the kind of comment that should come out of the mouth of any good sports injury professional:

"…he'll return a better and stronger player because of what's happened today so there's no reason to worry too much about him."

What people rarely allow themselves to contemplate is to actually go beyond simply making a full recovery.

• There is an opportunity that should be presented following injury for you to elevate your healt h, fitness and wellness.
• As a sports man or woman an opportunity to compete with levels of performance that surpass what was possible before the injury.

The key is to take a long term perspective and not be seduced into believing a quick fix is possible or desirable.

The long term perspective needs you to consider the causes of the injury and changing the behaviours that led to your discomfort and dysfunction. Learning to move better, behave like an athlete, understanding the absolute and unquestionable need to incorporate full, fluid, flowing movement into your physical training programme. When an injury has been suffered you need to guide healing whilst preserving your other physical abilities at as high a level as is possible (higher than most believe).

You need to find a sports injury facility that has a team with a depth of knowledge and experience that allows them to be confident in believing that you can achieve better fitness, movement, health and wellness than you had before. To achieve this you need to have patience, discipline and advice from a good sports injury specialist who can offer you seamless progression from the point of injury all the way through end stage and advance rehabilitation. Then be able to link you in with a strength and conditioning coach who can train you both to perform better and be better able to resist future injury and the effect of time and gravity on your muscular strength and joint mobility.

Obviously we consider the set up at Balance to be ideal in its ability to deliver exactly what you need as a sports injured man or woman.

To speak to a physiotherapist who can tell you about the process of getting you back to peak performance email or call us and we will discuss your situation as soon as we can.