When a sports injury happens, it can be a frightening experience not only for the athlete but also for their parents. Athletes may feel like their entire life is over after suffering from an injury. It’s essential for parents to support their child throughout the recovery process. If you’re a parent unsure how to help your child during this time, here are 5 tips to guide you.

“Core strength” is an essential component to athletic performance and participating in many activities of daily living, but we may be approaching it the wrong way! The goal of this publication is to discuss the contemporary view of “the core” and how this may fit (or not fit) into your rehabilitation and your performance training.

In order to return to the field, physical outputs, such as strength, power, speed, range of motion requirements, and work capacity are prerequisites to reintroduction to sport. However, these physical outputs require top-down control to be effectively implemented on the field. Cognitive components like motivation, confidence, reactions, and decision-making have a direct effect on how athleticism is expressed by athletes.

Injuries are an unfortunate reality for many athletes, but the psychological impact can be just as challenging as the physical recovery. After an injury, many athletes need to attend physical therapy to recover and strengthen the injured area. But, what many athletes do not consider is that it’s just as important to recover and strengthen one’s mind after an injury before returning to sport.

One of the most common issues among golfers is low back pain, affecting between 18% and 54% of players at various skill levels. This pain is frequently linked to swing faults that place excessive strain on the body's anatomical structures. One of these faults is reverse spine angle.

Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome (CECS) is a condition where the muscles of the lower leg swell after the initiation of exercise, resulting in significant cramping, pain, numbness/tingling, and ischemia into the lower leg. In addition to the muscles swelling, it is also believed that the fascia in the lower leg is stiff and does not allow for adequate expansion of the muscles during exercise.

You are not what you have been labeled or diagnosed. You are human that is meant to stay moving and doing what you love to do. Surround yourself with medical professionals that support and encourage that!

What is a Concussion? If you’re an athlete, there is a high chance you or someone you know has experienced a concussion. So, what is a concussion? Characterized as a mild traumatic brain injury, it’s a complex injury caused by a forceful impact to the head or body, causing the brain to move rapidly within the skull.

One of the primary goals of physical rehabilitation after an injury is to restore an individual's prior level of function. This is especially true in sports rehabilitation for competitive athletes. Power development is a key aspect to sports performance, whether it’s generating power with a golf or baseball swing, throwing or kicking a ball, running, or jumping. Athletes of all sports and activities require some sort of power development. 

During a good rehab process you should be strengthening, working on mobility and becoming more resilient, all things that are pushed aside when you are just focusing on your sport. These X factors not only assist in the process of going from 80 to 100 but beyond that!

Please treat all ankle sprains seriously and make sure that when you do go back to sport you are beyond 100% ready. Your rehab should normalize your ankle so that you cannot tell the difference between your injured and non-injured ankle in terms of motion, strength, stability and control, Make sure that you are challenged in rehab so that you are prepared for the load and stress that you will experience in your sport/activity.

A rupture of the Achilles tendon involves an injury to the lower leg in which there is a partial or full tear of the muscles that attach from the back of your calf to the heel. Achilles tendon ruptures are very common in the sport of gymnastics which may be attributed to multiple relating factors.

This blog post aims to explore various stretching techniques that can be incorporated into a baseball warm-up routine, helping players enhance their overall readiness for the game.

Do you have pain just below your knee cap when you squat? Does going downstairs make it worse? Does it hurt just to sit down into a chair? Does this pain keep you from pursuing your athletic endeavors? You may be experiencing patellar tendinopathy…

Being on a schedule consisting of daily commitments such as practice and/or games to transitioning to a schedule of having to keep up with physical activity outside of sports is a hard realization once it comes to that abrupt end. Finding ways to navigate these changes while maintaining your own mental wellness can be hard.

The ACL is the most commonly injured ligament in the knee, and it has been estimated that about 200,000 ACL injuries occur in the United States each year. ACL injuries can be treated conservatively with physical therapy or, depending on the severity of the injury and patient preference, surgical intervention may be indicated.

Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) is an uncommon diagnosis of shoulder pain that is prevalent in sports that requires repetitive overhead movements such as baseball, softball, swimming, tennis, volleyball, and even olympic style lifting. Click on the link below to learn more about what TOS is and how to treat it!

The power of the right physical therapy place is unknown unless you have experienced it yourself. As someone experiencing my first real injury, I had an idea of what I thought physical therapy was based off of what I had seen so far in my life. Finding a place that blew my perception of physical therapy out of the water was eye opening.

Performing these exercises before your next workout could be the secret you need to reach depth in the squat easier, build a stronger bench press arch, and reduce excess stress on the low back. Ensuring you maintain good mobility can help you to continue building your powerlifting total for years to come.

This blog is meant to provide general tips on regular physical care to keep you healthy and strong beyond the course of your physical therapy treatment.