Injury is the thing we try to avoid when we are active. For people who move anything that gets in the way of doing the things we love is a pain – literally usually. This is what we see in clinic. Painful bits of bodies, but what we really see is the injury frustration, the annoyance, the interruption to training or activities, having to stop and slow down. For people who move, we see the desperation of something that is not responding as it should.
What do we do when advice from Dr Google, friends, club colleagues, our GP, therapists all seem to come to nothing? Frustration kicks in. We try and do a bit of what we want to do, just to move a bit more. Sometimes it all works out and sometimes we just end up with a worsening situation or a new problem. A second opinion, or third is often sought, anything to help shed some light on the situation. Injuries can be complex and the more information we have the better chance of getting it sorted.
Overcoming The Frustration of Injury
What can we do? When nothing seems to be working out we need more information. We now have access to so much information that, admittedly, it can overload us. Information that is relevant to our own situation is essential. Injuries that are not healing up and related to our activities are repetitive strain injuries. The loads being placed on our bodies are exceeding the healing that is also going on. So we need to understand how and why our bodies are being constantly subjected to these damaging forces. How we move is key this and also to recovery, prevention, rehabilitation and performance. We need to know how and why we move as we do. Back to information, information is key.
How We Move Information
If we know how and why we are putting a force onto one bit of our body that it can’t cope with, then we can start to address the cause of the problem and not just address the symptoms. The painful bit is often not the root of the problem. It is often elsewhere, it is just the bit where the body breaks down. For example a painful left Achilles tendon could be due to a poorly functioning right big toe at the push off phase of our gait cycle.
How We Can Help
This would be really helpful for people who move and have injury frustrations with the aim to get you moving again. We have some great assessment tools to help shed light on why you are injured and maybe why it is not responding to treatments.
Firstly we assess the area and identify what is damaged. This is essential so you know what structures are involved. We will also assess other areas to see if there are any links. When we move we use all of our bodies and so finding linking patterns is helpful to shed light on how are bodies are reacting to the injury.
We then look at how you are moving. Our bodies have a preferred way to work and this has evolved our lifetime and is influenced by our activities and day to day lifestyle. Bodies will take the line of least resistance and this is not always the best for us to move, it is often a short term change to something else.
Video
We use 2D video to capture your running and walking. This is a really great thing as you can see how you actually move and it often makes a lot of sense when you see what your body is doing. We can also do a before and after look. Either following immediate treatment or as a follow up a few weeks later. Often we don’t feel anything has changed with our movements as the new movement then becomes our ‘normal’ movement. So to have video footage of what has changed can be a really strong message.
Footscan
Footscan is a mat that you stand, walk and even run on. This shows how you load each foot, timing of loading and where your body is over your foot at any particular time. This will show details that we can never see on video. We are ideally looking for a smooth progression from contact to push off and we can monitor where your body slows down or speeds up. This information is used to make our 3D Phits orthoses. It can also be used post treatment and there are blogs about this. Pain in big toes and top of feet during and after activity (colpodtherapies.co.uk)
Baiobit
This amazing device sits at the bottom of your spine on your pelvis and provides another level of data. This tells us stance, swing and float phases, cadence, step and stride length and we can easily see any asymmetry that may be occurring. It also gives us information on how your pelvis is moving in all 3 body planes. We do various tests with this; walk, running, balance, jumps and a variety of other uses. Again pre and post treatment tests will show progression or not.
Summary
These tests give us a very through understanding of how you are moving at the initial assessment. We have measurable data to compare once you have undergone treatments. If we want to work on a particular movement or part of your function we can easily see if this is happening. This is essential in reducing the damaging loads that we identify. This is so your injury recovers and you are less likely to have the same issues again. As I said at the beginning; understanding how and why you move as you do is such useful information. For injury recovery but also for prevention and performance improvement. It allows us to provide information on the specific areas on which we feel you are going to get the most impact from. For both short and long term results.
For more information have look here and if you have any questions or want more information then please contact us. Services – Colpod therapy (colpodtherapies.co.uk)
