Your Sports Injuries

Sports injuries are a common and frustrating problem for athletes, often resulting in long periods away from the sport they love. They tend to fall into two broad categories: traumatic injury and ‘overuse’.

Traumatic injury can happen in any sport but are especially common in contact sports and those requiring rapid changes in direction. Many such injuries result in pain and inflammation and this process can have detrimental effects on the surrounding tissues. Muscles tend to weaken, joints become stiff and movement control diminishes. A good example is an ankle sprain – it’s common after for the muscles around the ankle to weaken, the ankle joint becomes stiff and painful to move and the ability to balance is lost. Our approach is to treat not just the pain and inflammation but also the resultant weakness, stiffness and loss of movement control. This way we can prevent a recurrent problem developing.

‘Overuse’ injuries are common in many sports, especially where similar movements are repeated thousands of times during a sport. Runners experience a lot of overuse injuries due to the repetitive nature of the sport. You may have heard of runner’s knee or tennis elbow – these are both examples of overuse injuries. They require a 3 pronged approach – reduce the stress on the healing tissue to an appropriate level, deal with the cause of the excessive stress and strengthen the body to help it deal with the demands of the sport.

We share our patient’s passion for sport at Hove Physio, we know how frustrating missing out on your sport can be. We aim to return people to sport as soon as is safe to and will guide you through the process. We work with local sports clubs and provide education sessions on injury management and prevention. We’re always keen to share the knowledge we’ve gained from years of experience in sport. Our role doesn’t end with injury prevention, we also specialise in improving sports performance.