Sports Physiotherapy
Monica Benoit explains how Sports Physiotherapy can boost your recovery.
While many enjoy playing sports and keeping active, injuries can occur occasionally. Even those who are physically fit can get injured by accident. When left untreated, injuries can worsen, potentially requiring 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 wishing to return to the game 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 to return to playing their favourite sport.
In this article, we will discuss sports physiotherapy and the different methods 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 also 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. It also ensures that they can work out and play sports for longer and with less risk of injury from contact or blunt force trauma.
In addition to boosting physical toughness and sturdiness, sports physiotherapists also help accelerate patients' healing processes 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 human body's muscle repair process.
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, 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 an intense workout. They can also 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.
If swelling is a significant concern, the physiotherapist may use bandages and soft compression techniques to help reduce swelling. Elevation and cold therapy, also known as icing, may also be incorporated into the treatment to help relieve tension and soreness.
Thanks to recent advances in 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 lost muscle strength caused by injury, illness, or ageing. Physiotherapists support you in regaining standard 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 are experts in sports and exercise and have extensive training in nutrition. As a result, they can prescribe a healthy diet regime that may include 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. This vitamin generates collagen in the body, which has anti-inflammatory properties and helps rebuild tissue.
Page Reference
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- 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.