Shockwave Therapy

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Do you suffer from a tendon or soft tissue injury?  Keep reading to find out how Shockwave Therapy can assist you.

What is Shockwave Therapy?

Shockwave therapy is a non-invasive treatment using radial pressure waves that travel through the skin to stimulate pain relief and tissue repair, and is applied repeatedly to an area of injury.

This treatment helps reset and enhance healing patterns while reducing pain and improving function and muscle recovery.

Shockwave helps increase metabolism by influencing tissues at a cellular level, improves blood circulation promoting tissue healing and regeneration.

What conditions does it treat?

Disorder of tendon insertions:

  • Plantarfasciitis, heel pain or heel spur
  • Achilles Tendinopathy
  • Rotator Cuff Tendinopathy
  • Golfers / Tennis Elbow
  • Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome
  • Patella Femoral Pain Syndrome
  • Shin Splints
  • Greater Trochanteric Syndrome

Myofascial Trigger Points

  • Localises and deactivates

Activation of muscle and connective tissue

  • Increases circulation
  • Pulse vibration massage

Shockwave Therapy alone is not the answer. It must be used a part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

Call Enhance Physiotherapy to find out more about this treatment and how it can help you.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Training Advice

Now is the time where sport codes start to change from winter into summer and I will be on the lookout for more sports overuse related type injuries coming through our clinics. Amateur athletes have a tendency to change sports with differing physical training demands or go from doing minimal sport and activity over winter into a pre-season training regime that their body isn’t quite ready for. Particularly with the Rio Olympics just finished, the motivation and enthusiasm to rekindle those athletic days may come back as it has with myself!

I have recently decided to start running again, which was a very tough task at first. I found that because I hadn’t run consistently for a while I was firstly very sore after the first week but also that I was getting easily frustrated that I couldn’t run the distance or at the same intensity as before. The trouble I had was slowing myself down and not increasing my training too dramatically, but rather a gradual increase to allow my body to adapt to the new stresses I was placing on it.

Where this can be difficult is when your cardiovascular fitness starts to improve, your confidence grows and you decide to increase your distance without giving it much thought. Although very deceptive, since you feel comfortable with the distance, the muscles and bones tend to take a little longer to adapt to the repetitive loading placed upon it.

Whatever your goal, whether it be increasing your running distance or increasing your weights in the gym, then you need to regularly increase the stress placed on your body by adjusting things such as distance and intensity or within a gym setting, tinkering with the repetitions and weight. This is because the body adapts to the stresses placed upon it and as the adaptation takes place you will find you are able to handle the same load more efficiently. If, however, there is an abrupt and constant increase in load placed on the body, so much so that the load is greater that your ability to adapt, this is where the overuse type injuries become prevalent. The most common in runners tend to be knee pain, Achilles pain and hip pain, and in my experience for gym based work, this is where I more frequently see shoulder problems coming to the forefront.

I have always known to only gradually increase my training load to limit the risk of injury but it took me getting back into running to realise the true importance of this. I started getting a few little niggles and thought that some of you out there may be going through a similar feeling. Currently I am increasing my distance by 10% each week as this has been identified in some recent research as a safe increase in load with minimal risk of overuse injuries. In terms of weight training, an increase of about 5% is usually ideal to allow for continual progression without overloading those shoulders, backs and legs.

At Enhance Physiotherapy we take pride in keeping our clients moving, happy and healthy, and will leave no stone unturned in order to keep you doing what you love. So come see us for those little training nags that don’t seem to go away.

Happy Training!
Tim

Why is Michael Phelps so good at Swimming?

Why is Michael Phelps so good?

Michael Phelps just won his 22nd Olympic Gold Medal in Rio today, and he still has a few events to go. 22 Gold Medals. That number is astounding. He is now moving up the list of total Olympic Gold medals by COUNTRY. Currently there are only 38 countries with more gold medals in Olympic history than Michael Phelps. He is arguably the greatest Olympian ever.

Looking down the list of his achievements it begs the question, why is Michael Phelps so good at swimming?
The answer is probably a combination of factors including body shape, muscle type, training factors, technique and a mental strength that make him so great.

Let’s start with some genetic factors that may give Phelps an advantage. Michael Phelps is 193cm tall and has a wingspan of 203 cm! His height and reach allow him to reach a long way forward and displace huge amounts of water in one stroke of his arm. Just like having long legs will help you run faster, having long arms will help you swim faster. In a normal population your wingspan tends to be roughly equal to your height so this extra length in his arms gives Phelps a bio-mechanical advantage when it comes to swimming. Phelps also has huge hands and feet (he wears size 14 US shoes!). These act as flippers and give Phelps more propulsion as he uses them to shoot himself forward in the water. He is also said to have excess range of movement through many of his joints including his feet, however whether this gives him a bio-mechanical advantage is disputed. Many argue that as he has such exceptional range of movement in his ankles his feet act like flippers as they are able to produce a sling like effect which gives him more speed.

Apart from his genetic advantage, Michael Phelps has a great technique that allows him to produce maximal force with minimal effort. He is a master of both the freestyle and butterfly strokes and is very competitive in his own right when it comes to backstroke and breaststroke. As soon as he enters the water, before even surfacing, he uses powerful ‘dolphin’ kicks to accelerate to top speed in a matter of seconds, and then when he reaches the surface his stroke is symmetrical and uses his whole body to generate his stroke. He has terrific rotation through his thorax as he brings his arm over his head, which minimises the work on his shoulders. His perfect symmetry also allows him to stay level in the water and to swim perfectly straight, this reduces the water resistance and overall energy expended.
Now it’s likely that most, if not all Olympic swimmers, have physical traits similar to Phelps, and that they all have almost perfect technique, but with Michael Phelps the case may be that he is almost the perfect body shape for swimming, like the perfect storm.

The last few ingredients that make him great though, are in my opinion, the most important. These are dedication, hard work and mental toughness. Phelps has dedicated his life to swimming and spent decades getting up before sunrise to train and train to reach the top and stay there. His longevity is astounding and can be put down to sheer hard work and determination. He also never gives up and always backs himself to win. He has had his fair share of controversies out of the pool, but in the face of them has been able to knuckle down, focus on his swimming and just keep winning. And that in my eyes is what a champion does.

At the end of the day, athletes like Michael Phelps are once in a generation. So the best thing to do is appreciate their greatness while it lasts and not get too bitter when they beat the Aussies. Sometimes they’re simply too good.

All the best, Markus