Injuries can mean serious setbacks, both in your sport and in your day-to-day life. You can prevent injuries from occurring in the first place with regular preventive physiotherapy sessions.
Can you help reduce injuries?
Don’t get sidelined by injuries. Prevention is the key to a healthy active lifestyle and optimal performance in sport. Your pre-season preparation should include a visit to a physiotherapist for an assessment to determine your risk of injury.
For masters-level athletes or the serious recreational athlete, getting injured can be a major obstacle if your goals are fitness and a healthy lifestyle. For competitive athletes and elite athletes peak performance comes from proper preparation.
Pre and post-season physiotherapy assessments will include a comprehensive look at muscle balances to ensure that your body is working optimally.
Your therapist will discuss previous injuries and training concerns and will develop an individualized sport-specific exercise program to restore proper muscle length/ tension, strength, and proprioception to reduce your risk of injury and improve your overall performance.
Prevention
Don’t wait for the pain to sideline you. If you experience any of these early warning signs, we can help.
Warning Signs:
- Joint stiffness that doesn’t go away after training
- A feeling of tightness or tension in muscles that persists
- Difficulty increasing intensity or volume of training
- A decrease in your sport performance
Treatment
Our team has experience in managing acute and chronic sports injuries in athletes of all levels from the weekend warrior to Olympic and World Class athletes. Over-the-counter braces are available for various conditions/injuries, i.e. carpal tunnel, patella-femoral pain, and ankle sprains. Custom fitting of ACL braces is also available.
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Acute Sports Injuries
The first phase in the management of acute sports injuries is to control pain and swelling to allow the body to begin the healing phase. However, treatment does not stop when pain is relieved.
Research on sports injuries clearly identifies that failure to adequately retrain and rehabilitate the whole athlete leads to an increased risk of either recurrence of the initial injury or a new injury altogether. Therapists at Motion Works Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Centre will provide individualized sport-specific exercise treatment programs to regain your mobility, strength, and proprioception to minimize your risk of re-injury.
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Chronic Recurring Sports Injuries
Chronic injuries occur as a result of muscle imbalances or compensation from previous injuries, overtraining, or inadequate strength and conditioning. Physiotherapists at Motion Works Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Centre are trained in completing a detailed analysis of risk factors and patterns of muscle balance with movement.
Treatments to lengthen muscles that are too short or tight and strengthen others too weak will ensure that your sport–specific exercise program can be successful. Restoring proper muscle balances and retraining proprioception will make a chronic problem manageable and pain-free.
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Treatment Techniques
At MotionWorks Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Centre, we provide a wide range of scientifically proven, evidence-based treatment techniques for sports injuries, including:
- Active exercises to restore flexibility, strength, endurance, and balance
- Manual Therapy for joint restrictions or stiffness
- Trigger Point Dry Needling to manage trigger points and neuropathic pain
- Myofascial release techniques for short, tight muscles and soft tissue
- Ultrasound and other electrotherapy agents for the management of acute injuries
- Stabilization with tape or bracing
- Proprioceptive taping for movement retraining and control (i.e. Kinesiotape)
- Acupuncture for the management of pain/ swelling
Return to Your Active Lifestyle
Our team of physiotherapists serving the Ottawa area can help you recover from an injury and get back to your healthy, active lifestyle. Let us help you regain your peak performance.