Keep getting injured? What can I do?

Running Injury

As a runner in my 40’s I’ve started to notice that although I can be as fast over some distances as I was in my 30’s (forgive me, I was never a runner in my 20’s so can’t really compare to then), there are a couple of things that are different about how I am able to train, and have affected my training schedules. If you’re getting toward, or indeed past that age, you might have noticed an increase in injury and a subsequent decline in your ability to train hard. What can you do about it? Giving up generally … Continue reading

What to do with a mountain of MSc paperwork?

It can be strange in the year after completing an MSc. All the information that you crammed in your head to pass exams- which is also part and parcel of your job, if it isn’t used, just leaks out of your ears. The semesters were very much distinct in focus, with a section based around a foundation level of knowledge, the upper limb and spine, and the lower limb and spine- each was very much a section in it’s own right with exams and presentations. They meshed together very well but were also taught in very different styles. So I … Continue reading

Knee Pain and doing your exercises

A couple of athletes have come to me recently with knee pain. One, a very good runner, the other, an alpinist with a history including an ACL rebuild. The thing they had in common was that in the last year they had done some excellent gym work, building up their leg strength and proprioception. However, for whatever reason, in the last 6 to 8 months this level of rehabilitation, or in fact any level of work in the gym, had completely tailed off. Despite this, their levels of activity in sport had stayed the same or became greater. Everything has … Continue reading

Yoga- a hate/hate relationship?

I have a pretty bad relationship with stretching. It goes back a long way. I remember never being very flexible- in fact, to go further, it was always that I was very inflexible. I have a clear memory of doing ballet as a very young child and being aware that everyone else was able to contort themselves into these crazy positions, and I was nowhere near achieving them, no matter what. And that was just in the warm up. One day I just decided I wasn’t getting out of the car for ballet practice as I was just done with … Continue reading

Falling off a bike- Hip bursitis

As you may or may not know, I’ve had a couple of minor issues on my most recent forays on the bike. The first one ended with me getting some kind of nasty GI symptoms for about 3 days after I ingested something gnarly that probably got flicked up onto my water bottles. (Relatively easy fix- bought some new water bottles with caps over the top). The second one – well it didn’t end with me falling off- that is far too dramatic- more that I fell over. It was about halfway through the ride at the bottom of a … Continue reading

The problem with Evidence in Physiotherapy

It would seem that the problem with evidence in physiotherapy is quite often that: a) there isn’t enough of it b) what there is is of bad quality c) you can’t really blind people to a lot of the treatments d) a number of the outcome measures are subjective as opposed to objective which gives an inherent risk of bias. e) the outcome is nearly always “we need to do more research”. And these are only the problems that I can pull off the top of my head on a Saturday evening. Traditionally we see clinical trials- randomised double blind … Continue reading