Sports injury and rehab, taken through to actually playing again
Daniel Okoye runs this side of the practice, alongside two evenings a week with a local district cricket club. Most of what comes through the door is amateur sport played seriously: district cricket and football, netball, social soccer, and a great many runners training for the Adelaide events.
The first part of a sports injury — settling it down — is the easy part. What decides whether you re-injure it is the middle: strength that has been measured, speed that has been rebuilt gradually, and a return staged with your coach rather than guessed on a Thursday night.
The return-to-sport stages
Click through the stages to see what each one is for and what has to be true before you move on. The timeframes are typical rather than promised — a calf strain and an ankle ligament behave differently, and so do people.
Stage 1 of 5 · Days 1 to 5
Settle it down
Protect the injured tissue, keep the rest of you moving.
Load is reduced, not removed. Compression and relative rest where it helps, gentle range of movement early, and work for everything that is not injured so you are not starting from scratch in three weeks. We tell you at this point what the likely timeframe is.
Before moving on
Walking or moving without a limp and without needing to guard it.
This is a general description of how staged rehabilitation works, not advice for your injury, and it is not a screening or scoring tool. Your own timeframe is set in the room after an examination.
What we measure before you go back
- Side-to-side strength through the injured muscle group, using a dynamometer rather than a guess.
- Single leg hop and hold, for both distance and quality of landing.
- Calf endurance repetitions, which is the one most runners fail and the one that matters most.
- Running mechanics at speed, filmed on a phone so you can see what we are describing.
Working with your coach
With your permission we will speak to your coach or trainer directly, and put the current stage and the training restrictions in writing so nobody has to interpret a verbal message on a Saturday morning.
Fees are the same as any other appointment: $95 for the 45 minute first assessment, $85 for a 30 minute follow-up, including GST where applicable. No referral is needed to book.