Sports Physiotherapy Edinburgh
For athletes of all disciplines and standards, we offer Sports Physiotherapy to assess, diagnose and manage injuries and ultimately improve resilience to train and play harder!
Whether your sport is rugby, dance, golf, football, kickboxing, running or the gym, visiting us when, or even before, you have an issue can really help with quicker recovery time.
At ProMOTION Physiotherapy, our intention is to deliver the athlete back to their sport better, stronger, faster and more resilient than at pre-injury levels.
Our sports physiotherapists also focus on maintaining the athletes’ fitness while healing / recovering from injury by prescribing appropriate alternatives to the activity that might be causing the pain/ injury.
We look at the athlete as a whole and use imaginative strategies to concentrate on other areas, maybe areas of weakness that are often ignored when the patient is fit. For example, if a scrum half has rolled their ankle we will add passing drills to the rehabilitation programme focusing on left- and right-hand passes while doing ankle balance work. This strategy also helps from a psychological perspective in terms of making functional gains while injured.
Diagnosis
Providing a diagnosis of an acute sports injury in a timely way is imperative to minimize time away from the sport. Once the physiotherapist has assessed an athlete they will provide a diagnosis, treat the injury then provide a comprehensive, individualised plan and prognosis (idea of timelines for return to sport).
Acute Injury Management
Once a diagnosis is made, the physiotherapist can help minimise time out of sport. This is achieved by providing the best early treatment to reduce the risk of complications, decrease compensatory movements leading to pain elsewhere, and address any biomechanical issues thereby maximising healing potential.
Your sports physiotherapist will provide guidance as to the most appropriate early management strategies – to ice or not to ice? When should an athlete compress an injury? Should the athlete wear a brace or tape or use a sling or crutches? Should they off-load the injury or should they move and load the injured tissues? We have the answers.
Guidance as to up-to-date post-injury strategies –PEACE & LOVE1, rather than the dated PRICE regime.
Rehabilitation
Whether it’s a simple roll of the ankle or a more complex dislocated shoulder your physiotherapist will take you through a process of assessment to gauge any limitations such as strength, range of movement, control, stability and likelihood of re-occurrence in a holistic approach to the injury.
A structured, individualised programme will be designed and prescribed to the patient to ensure optimal recovery.
Return to Training
Your sports physiotherapist will monitor you and guide your recovery. This will support you to meet certain criteria (speed, power, strength, flexibility, muscle control, movements) to enable them to decide on your ability to safely return to training. Your rehabilitation programme will be tailored to your activity/sport/position/movements you will need to be able to replicate on return to training.
So if you are a Hooker in rugby who has injured your shoulder, as well as rehabilitating the injured joint, we also look at your scrum positioning, ability to throw into the line-out, and lift in the defensive line-out.
Or you might be a dancer who needs help with shin splints – we treat the symptoms, get to the bottom of the problem which caused the injury in the first place and tailor the rehabilitation to prepare you to be able to twist, land, hop and jump without pain!
Return to Sport / Competition
Once back in training we put in place final return to sport fitness tests to ensure the athlete is ready for the next big step of returning to their sport and competition. This is imperative to reduce the likelihood of re-injury. We put in place a battery of appropriate tests to assess readiness to resume at the highest level.
Injury Prevention
Once the athlete is back training and playing their sport we instigate an injury prevention strategy. In truth, this is a risk reduction tactic as we cannot prevent all injuries eg if you are going to get tackled…you might get injured from the trauma.
However, by introducing some simple routines that the athlete can introduce to their gym/conditioning programme or to their warm-up/cool-down routine a big step toward injury prevention can be attained. We can guide you on the most appropriate exercises – time-saving exercises, ‘biggest bang for your buck’ exercises for those with limited time, to help maintain the gains you have made with your rehabilitation.
Our sports physiotherapists use the latest research and strategies used at the highest levels of sport to help athletes engage in injury prevention routines be it for neck, hamstring, knees, groins, calf, ankles and overuse injuries. These are great programmes to initiate in the off-season and continue throughout the year.
Pre-Post Operative Rehabilitation
Following assessment, unfortunately, we often diagnose injuries that may require surgical intervention. Often there is a waiting time before surgery goes ahead. Rather than just waiting we undertake a Pre-Operative Rehabilitation Programme with the aim of minimising the recovery time post-op and maximising the patient’s overall health and fitness. This is important as post-surgery there is usually inevitable downtime and initial recovery period post-op.
Often the surgeons comment on how prepared our patients are for their operation physically and suggest it is a major contributing factor to favourable outcomes post-surgery.
Physiotherapeutic Exercise Prescription
All patients receive a bespoke set of exercises to help maximize their recovery and minimize time away from their sport. Our physiotherapist will prescribe exercises that are most relevant to the requirements of the athlete post-assessment rather than a hit-and-hope approach.
The physiotherapist will ensure that the programme is pitched at the correct level and that progression is clear – the athlete should be aware that they are making progress and achieving their goals.
Taping
Our physiotherapists are trained in taping techniques to support patients whether in acute injury management or performance enhancement. Some injuries require some protection and others require stimulation or compression – our physiotherapist will offer the most appropriate techniques.
Performance
Our physiotherapists are movement specialists. If an athlete is limited by not being able to obtain a certain range of movement, which limits their performance then our physiotherapists will be able to help. This might be getting more depth in a squat or hamstring tightness when running. Many of our patients attend the clinic for performance-related issues rather than painful conditions.
