What is Sports Therapy?Sports Therapy aims to help treat, rehabilitate and prevent injury, allowing you to function at your best at work, manage day to day activity and for optimum sporting performance and recovery.
Functional and postural assessments, muscle, joint and ligament strength and stress tests as well as a range of hands on treatment approaches:- Soft Tissue Release, Muscle Energy Techniques, Trigger Point Therapy and Sports Massage are used to cover a wide range of requirements from neck pain to preparing for a marathon.
This works to reduce pain by reprogramming signals to and from the muscle to the central nervous system, break down scar tissue and increase flexibility by functionally lengthening the affected area of muscle. Specific pressure is used at the location of a problem area whilst the area is stretched either actively (you perform the movement making your muscles actively work) or passively (the therapist controls and performs the movement).
Its popularity amongst athletes finding a method that allowed them to quickly return to sport has now transferred to being used as a successful treatment approach in non sporting contexts as well.
What are Muscle Energy Techniques?
These are resisted active stretching techniques to functionally lengthen tissue, reprogram muscle tension, help restore muscle function, stimulate repair, increase joint range of motion, balance groups of muscles acting on and around a joint, oxygenate and remove wastes from all corresponding tissues.
What are Trigger Points and What is Trigger Point Therapy?
These are hyperirritable/sensitive taut bands within muscle which may be painful, tender to the touch/pressure or produce referred pain (pain away from the site) when stimulated. Active trigger points are ones that produce pain without pressure. Latent trigger points may only produce pain on pressure and satellite trigger points may be on a referred pathway of pain.
Trigger point therapy applies concentrated and specific pressure at trigger points to change the neuromuscular pathway and thus break cycles of muscle spasm and pain. |