Key Takeaways
1. Rehabilitation from a sports injury is a staged process from assessment through to active rehabilitation and finally returning to sport via a return-to-sport test.
2. The amount of drop out from physiotherapy and exercise-based programs can be as high as 70%. This means that a lot of injuries will go on to reoccur.
3. A good sports injury clinic will give you a written recovery plan. There should be clear targets for the end of each phase of recovery and an outline of what to expect at each upcoming appointment.
Introduction
Most sudden injuries such as twisting your knee playing 5-a-side on the Dukes Meadows pitches are treated within hours on the internet. This is when everyone becomes a Physio or Sports Doctor overnight dishing out advice on rest, ice, pain killers and bandaging. But the most important thing to treat an injury is to establish the correct diagnosis of the injury and treat the tissues within the knee accordingly.
A good sports injury clinic will diagnose your injury correctly on the first assessment and then provide you with a treatment plan with clear objectives to enable you to return to activity as quickly as possible.
What Happens at Your First Assessment?
A good assessment at a sports injury clinic will highlight any restrictions in movement around the patient may have around the area of pain. These can be contributing to the cause of the injury, or may stop the injury from fully healing. The physiotherapist will typically ask the patient for details of their current injury, their current sport or activity, their typical training, as well as any previous injuries the patient may have had.
The patient’s movement will then be tested through a series of tests to help arrive at the best diagnosis. Sometimes an ultrasound scan or other imaging may be required to confirm the exact nature of the injury. The injury could be a pulled muscle or a broken bone for example. A good sports injury clinic will have HCPC registered physiotherapists on staff, and will typically be able to arrive at a correct diagnosis within one appointment.
How Does the Plan Actually Progress?
The recovery from injury is not a straight line and needs to be looked at in stages of recovery. Initially, the focus of a physiotherapist’s sessions would be to reduce pain and inflammation, then to improve range of movement into the affected area and finally to work on strengthening up the surrounding muscles to allow return to activity. Most sports involve lots of rapid change of direction and therefore lots of high-intensity bursts of activity, so it is also important that rehab tests these movements out on the affected side to ensure full recovery.
Why Do So Many Recovery Plans Stall?
The time for which pain from an injury takes to settle down is far less than the time for which tissues take to repair completely from an injury. Consequently, it is perceived by most individuals that they have fully recovered from an injury when the pain from the injury has settled down. However, the vast majority of exercise programs for the rehabilitation from sports injuries are not adhered to by most individuals.
A recent peer-reviewed article found that dropout rates from physiotherapy and exercise-based programs can reach up to 70% (NCBI). This is largely due to most individuals being unaware of the subsequent stages of rehabilitation that are required to enable individuals to return to their regular levels of activity following an injury.
What to Look for in a Chiswick Sports Injury Clinic?
Rehabilitation is typically delivered in a number of phases and therefore works best as a structured plan outlined above. It is worth asking a sports injury clinic how they deliver their rehabilitation in phases prior to booking an appointment. This will give you a better understanding of how they work and whether they are right for you. Many clinics list their Physios on their website; for example, we have listed those that work at Omnia Lifestyle Clinics in Chiswick below. It is also worth taking a look at a video that has been made of a typical sports injury rehabilitation session.
Clinic4Sport’s team can offer a full assessment and create a recovery plan to get you back to your sports in no time. Don’t put off your treatment for longer; book your assessment today and start your recovery to full fitness as soon as possible. Book a physiotherapy Chiswick assessment early rather than waiting for the pain to force your hand. Treat the plan with the same discipline you'd give training, and the recovery holds.
