Sports Physiotherapy
Monica Benoit explains how Sports Physiotherapy can boost your recovery.
While many people enjoy playing sports and keeping active, injuries can occur from time to time. Even those who are physically fit can get injured by accident. When left untreated, injuries can become worse, and potentially require more invasive procedures to treat the problem. However, working with a sports physiotherapist can boost your recovery and may even prevent the need for surgical intervention.
Full medical clearance is imperative for any professional or amateur athlete that wishes to return to the game that they love after an injury. As such, many will first turn to sports physiotherapy in Toronto. Here, they can receive pain relief, improve their movement, and accelerate the healing process so they can get back to playing their favourite sport.
In this blog, we are going to discuss sports physiotherapy and the different methods that are used to accelerate the recovery process in both amateur and professional athletes.
What is Sports Physiotherapy?
Sports physiotherapy is a medical discipline that is focused on both preventing and treating injuries that are caused by vigorous exercise or sports-related activities. Sports physiotherapists work with amateur athletes, as well as men, women, and children of all ages, backgrounds, and levels of physical competence and prowess.
Physiotherapists advise their patients, helping them to play sports, or exercise, in the safest manner possible to prevent injuries from occurring or recurring in the future. They help promote a healthy and active lifestyle so that their patients can live long and fulfilling lives.
Benefits of Sports Physiotherapy
Sports physiotherapy can help amateur and professional athletes build physical toughness and endurance. Physiotherapy ensures that they can work out and play sports for longer, and with less risk of getting injured from contact or blunt force trauma.
In addition to boosting physical toughness and sturdiness, sports physiotherapists also help accelerate the healing process of patients by using many different treatment methods.
For instance, they may use heat therapy, ice therapy, a combination of both, or specialized sports massage techniques to help activate and accelerate the muscle repair process of the human body.
Joint and muscle flexibility will also gain a significant boost with repeated sessions. Hence, if you are an athlete who relies on having great joint and muscle flexibility, then you can make substantial gains by working with a physiotherapist on a routine basis. Many professional football players, sprinters, and swimmers work with a sports physiotherapist regularly to help maximize their joint and muscle flexibility before a big event.
Moreover, sports physiotherapy techniques can help you cool down after a competition or after an intense workout. It can boost your overall athletic performance by increasing your movement and correcting muscular imbalances before a game.
Physiotherapy Techniques that Can Help You with Quick Recovery
Physiotherapists commonly apply a range of motion exercises to focus on the primary injury site on the patient's body that is causing them the most pain and discomfort. By doing so, the healing process is stirred into action, which will help the patient recover quicker from their injury.
Also, if swelling is a significant concern, then the physiotherapist may use bandages and soft compression techniques to help reduce swelling. Elevation and cold therapy, which is also known as icing, may also be incorporated into the treatment to help relieve tension and soreness.
Thanks to recent advances in the field of physiotherapy, many physiotherapists use low-level laser therapy to help their patients recover quicker. For those unaware, low-level laser therapy is a state-of-the-art treatment modality that uses light as a potent healing catalyst to reduce muscle pain and inflammation without any side effects.
In some scenarios, your physiotherapist may opt for a “low-tech” treatment instead and use hot packs to reduce stiffness and pain with minimal discomfort. Furthermore, they can help you regain any lost muscle strength caused by injury, illness, or ageing. Physiotherapists support you in regaining normal walking patterns over time, and doing so is paramount. Relearning to walk will facilitate regular weight transfer from the patient's feet to their back, hips, and knees.
Sports physiotherapists have extensive training in nutrition, in addition to being experts in sports and exercise. As a result, they can prescribe a healthy diet regime, that may include taking natural supplements or certain foods, to help accelerate the healing process.
For example, they may ask you to eat dark leafy greens and citrus fruits regularly, as they contain vitamin C; which will generate collagen in the body that has anti-inflammatory properties and help rebuild tissue.
Page Reference
If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:
- BENOIT, M. (2019) Sports Physiotherapy [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article486.htm [Accessed
About the Author
Monica Benoit is a blogger in Toronto. She is currently working as an outreach coordinator for Physiomobility. She graduated with honours from the University of British Columbia with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing.