The relationship between how you recover and how well you can perform has been well established. Training can be described as applying stress to your body. Recovery is then the process of handling that stress, and allowing your body to adapt to the stress. If this balance swings too far to the stress side, then injury can occur. In a world where there are countless recovery ‘strategies’ it is important not to get lost in the 1%’s and ensure the most important aspects of recovery are done right.

Running injuries typically occur from the interaction of numerous contributing factors. When training loads exceed the body’s physical capacity to handle it for a prolonged period, a running injury can occur. To help simplify this complex interaction it is helpful to group factors into those that affect the ability of the body to handle load or training stress and those that influence loads placed upon the body. By better understanding what these factors are and how they interact we aim to reduce the risk of injury.

The shoulder joint is a highly mobile joint. Unlike the hip joint which is a ball in a deep socket, the top of the humerus (long bone of upper arm) articulates on the glenoid (a part of the shoulder blade) and resembles a ‘golf ball on a tee’. Shoulder instability refers to excessive movement of the humeral head on the glenoid, resulting in pain, dislocations, or apprehension. People may be fearful of this instability, and worried about further injuries - either traumatic or non-traumatic. 

Outside of professional sports settings, low levels of return to activity performance and high re-injury rates are common in ACL Rehabilitation in the UK. Currently, less than a third of ACL patients return to sports within 12 months of their surgery, and less than 50% of patients ever reach their pre-injury level of performance. Failure rates are as high as 30% in the UK, with younger patients being more at risk than their older counterparts. This is likely due to their higher expectation of recovery, and their higher level of sports and activities.

Calling all runners! If you had an extra hour each week to devote to training, what would you do with it? Add some more miles? Yoga? Cycling? Core work?

For most runners, strength training would be the last thing that they would choose to fill that space, but in actuality, should be the first. Whether the objection comes from worries about getting slow or questions about the science, weight training is still debated in some running circles.

When most people in the gym lift weights, they tend to pick a number of reps and just aim to ‘get the weight up. However, that’s not the only phase of a repetition. Each lift can have three distinctive phases: the concentric, the eccentric, and the isometric phases. Knowing the difference between them can help us rehab, strengthen, and break through plateaus.

Currently, there is a debate amongst healthcare and fitness professionals of whether we should allow our knees to go over our toes during exercise. This debate is usually focused on squats specifically. So who is right?

Skiing season is coming up, so we are entering another season of skiing-related injuries. Why do people get injured while skiing? Skiing presents us with much higher speeds and force going through joints, which means that there is a higher chance of sustaining significant injuries such as broken bones, ACL tears, and concussions.

‘Tennis Elbow’ is a term used to describe medial epicondyalgia. This injury is usually when there is a gradual overload of the common extensor tendons of the wrist and forearm. These tendons play a role in all gripping tasks, but also in wrist extension. Although tennis players probably amount to a very small percentage of people that get medial epicondyalgia, the injury was closely associated to racket sports, and called tennis elbow.

BSIs are currently known as stress fractures, which is a much more commonly used term by the public. Stress fractures describe micro cracks forming in the bone. Although the human body is usually good at adapting to increased stress on bones, if we apply too much stress for long periods of the time, the bones don’t have time to heal, which can then result in an injury that can leave you on the sidelines.

Everyone has ‘pulled a muscle’ at some point in their life. Maybe you’ve sprinted for the bus and felt a sharp tightness in your hamstring, or you turned too quickly after someone called your name and you felt a tweak in your neck. A pulled muscle is used as an umbrella term to describe an injury to a muscle that isn’t a full tear. Within this range, a pulled muscle may last for a few minutes, but can be more severe and last several months and require a period of rehab away from your sport or preferred activity.

Yep, even that guy in the gym bench pressing 200kg or that girl that has a 12-pack, were both beginners once. At some point we are all beginners. Being new to the gym can be daunting, and sticking to your goals is no easy thing to do. Here are our top tips for gym beginners to make sure that you feel comfortable in the gym, stay safe, and can keep reaching your health and fitness goals.

Whether you have designed your own gym program, have a coach who plans your workouts, or you just go to the gym everyday and make it up on the spot, there are a few key movement patterns that you should be incorporating into your training.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is that sore, aching, painful feeling in the muscles after unfamiliar and unaccustomed intense exercise. DOMS is thought to be due to temporary muscle damage and inflammation for which the most common trigger appears to be eccentric exercises.

When someone gets pain, they usually stop doing the activity that is painful. They might wait for a few days or weeks for it to get better, and sometimes it doesn’t get better with rest. What is the next step? Oftentimes someone will go to their GP or physiotherapist. When you’re doing some of the testing movements or rehab, there is pain present. What do you do?

Whether you are new to exercise, or a seasoned athlete, you may have heard of Zone 2 Training. This is a form of cardiovascular training to help build endurance, which may be to perform better at your sport, or it may be for health reasons. The ‘zones’ in cardiovascular training are roughly based on your maximum heart rate, and require some simple calculations. If you have an Apple or Garmin watch however, or a similar watch with a heart monitoring capability, this calculation may be done for you.

At MVMNT Physiotherapy, typically we look at breaking down an athletes’ rehab into four phases. Now when we state 'athlete’, we mean anyone that considers either their gym training or their sport, as an integral part of their life.

There are many health benefits associated with regular cardiovascular and resistance training in teenagers. When given appropriate guidance and programming, strength training can positively influence sports performance, physical health, and mental health.

When someone comes to physiotherapy, it can be for one of two reasons. Either someone is in pain doing an activity and can no longer do it, or they can do the activity, but believe that with specific treatment and rehabilitation, they can do it better. With respect to these two issues, one must ask themselves, ‘‘Do I need to be pain-free?’’

Icing is often the first instinct someone has when they have an injury. Our parents, and even our grandparents have probably always got a cold bag of vegetable out of the freezer any time anyone in the family had a bump or a bruise. From the playing in the playground, to Premier League Football, ice packs will always be the ‘go to’ when it comes to pain relief. But is it necessary?