The word fall seems like a very simple word but has drastic effects on individuals who have had falls, especially in the older population. Children and teenagers, on the other hand, generally don’t have to worry about it because they have good balance developed from an everyday activity like running, jumping around, playing and exploring the world. Youth also has a stronger ability to heal from injury, therefore it wouldn’t be too big of an issue even if the fall happens.

For adults and older individuals, falling comes with more unwanted effects. Stating the obvious, we get taller as we grow. This also means we fall harder since we are further away from the ground. The healing abilities of an adult and older individuals are also not as good, therefore injuries take time to heal. During this time, muscle tends to atrophy relatively fast, so rebuilding muscle mass would take time. With the loss of muscle mass also comes with reduced balance as well and increase the risk of falling.

From that vicious cycle of falling, deteriorating and further increasing risk of falling, something has to be changed. We highly recommend starting an exercise program that specifically trains your balance. Balance specific exercises have been found to reduce the risk of falls, especially in older individuals. 

With that said, make sure you check in with a physiotherapist to ensure you are safe to complete the specific exercises. Some of these exercises are specially designed to challenge your balance, in which there is always that risk of falling during the completion of the exercise. To ensure safety, it is best to get a trained pair of eyes to monitor and guide your process.

If reducing the risk of falling is something you are interested in, speak to a physiotherapist to see which exercises are best suited for you. At capital physiotherapy, we encourage exercise based therapy as a preventive measure for falls risk reduction. Our physiotherapists have ample experience setting up balance specific exercise program and can give individualized recommendations to help with falls prevention. Our clinics are located in Balwyn, Footscray and South Yarra so contact us today at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au and get a holistic individualized program set up that is best suited for you. 

The days are getting colder and winter is coming. What better time to head to the mountains and get your adrenaline pumping with a ski trip. Who doesn’t like a bit of speed to get your blood pumping in the snow? Skiing is a great form of exercise because it develops your cardiovascular fitness and your balance as well. To be able to ski properly, requires quite a bit of control and coordination before you get fluent with the motion. This does take some time to train up, so in the meantime do be weary towards some common ski related injuries.

Skier’s Thumb (ulnar collateral ligament tear)

A very common injury which the thumb is wrenched backwards when falling onto your hands. The name Skier’s Thumb is appropriate because it occurs more commonly in skiing. This is due to the poles that you fall on adds an extra lever of force to bend the thumb backwards.

Shoulder Dislocation

If you fall during your skii, you little time to think about how to land. Both falling on an outstretched hand or directly onto the shoulder has a chance for your shoulder to dislocate, especially when you fall at a high speed.

Posterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL)

PCL injuries mostly occur when you fall directly onto your knee, causing the lower leg to shift backwards. The skis and boots add an extra weight to shift your knee backwards during the fall, therefore increasing the risk of this injury to occur.

Lower back Pain

If you are ever going to gain lots of speed in skiing, you’ve need to lean forward to cut through the air. This does put quite a bit of strain in your lower back. For people who have not maintained their fitness levels, your core and lower back muscles may not be developed enough to sustain this position and therefore are more susceptible to back pain.

With all these potential injuries that can occur, it is important to take steps to reduce the chances of these injuries from occurring. There are plenty of ways to accomplish ski injury prevention. The simplest way is to maintain or increase your fitness levels. This means continuing with your walking activities or ramping it up to a run, maintaining your gym activity or increasing your intensity inside the gym.

On the other hand, if you hardly do any exercise and are wanting to get into skiing for this season, it might be a good idea to start some specific strengthening and prevention exercise before starting. 

At Capital Physiotherapy, we have physiotherapists who are familiar with starting people in the right level of exercise intensity aimed to progress to intensive sports like skiing. If you planning to start a new activity, make an appointment so we can point you towards the right direct safely and efficiently.

Capital Physiotherapy is conveniently located in Hawthorn (Formerly at Balwyn), Footscray and South Yarra. You may call, email us at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au or book online today to get started on a program best suited for you.

Neck pain is a very common musculoskeletal condition that continue to rise. Statistics have suggested that adults will experience neck pain that interrupts their everyday activity including work, cooking, eating, playing with the kids and socializing. Since this condition is so prevalent, it would be useful to have some strategies to manage the pain and also some strategies to prevent the pain from returning.

Neck pain has much to do with how much load and stress you are putting on your neck. If your work requires you to be in front of a desk for long periods of time, the chances are your posture isn’t the greatest and therefore place more stress on the joints and muscles of your neck. If you are getting pains, you can do simple stretches to help your muscles and joints relax for a bit before continuing work. We’ve discussed this in a previous post Stretches for the Office Warriors.

Another way reduce the load and stress on your neck would be setting up your workplace correctly. This topic has been discussed in our Work Desk Ergonomic blog.

With regards to preventative measures, we highly recommend strengthen your upper back muscles to be able to sustain the load and stress which you are giving your neck. The upper back muscles that should be targeted is the trapezius. These muscles are located between your shoulder blade and extend up towards your neck.

A simple exercise to target this muscle with would be squeezing your shoulder blade together. This exercise is a beginner level exercise that targets the entire trapezius muscle. The proper technique for this exercise would be to focus more on touching the lower tip of your shoulder blade together rather than the top. This is because the upper trapezius tend to be overactive while to lower parts tend to be underactive.

It’s important to keep in mind that the strengthening process does not come overnight. You would need to continue strengthening exercises for at least 6-8 weeks to notice a difference with your pain levels. Moreover, exercises need to be progressed to make your muscles stronger.

For more tips and advice, be sure to drop by a physiotherapist to get a thorough check-up and recommendations to help manage your neck issues. At capital physiotherapy, we have friendly physiotherapist who have plenty of experience with neck related pain. If you are near the neighbourhood of South Yarra, Footscray or Balwyn, be sure to reach us by email at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au or contact us at 0401 865 333 to setup a holistic program to manage your neck related issues.

You’ve probably had your share of physical injuries whether it’s work or sports related. You’ve probably even had your boss, coach, coworkers or teammates try motivating you by saying the pain is all in your head. Sound familiar? As much as pain can stem from an injury, it is very true that the pain is felt in the head.

Take dental removals for example. With the advancement of medical techniques, people can go through dental removal without feeling pain during the time. How does that work? In this procedure, requires cutting the skin, pulling the teeth out and sewing up the gums. Wouldn’t you think it would cause at least a little bit of pain?

Our body has nerves that specializes in sensing pain. These can start almost anywhere in the body, from the skin, muscle, ligaments, internal organs, you name it. These nerves travel first to the spinal cord, then up towards the head and finally enters the brain. The brain is the organ that registers the sensation as a painful one.

If anything happens to the nerve anywhere in this pathway, it would be affect the way the brain interprets pain. Going back to the dental removal example, the dentist probably injected some type of drug into your gums before digging your tooth out. What this drug does is block the pain sensing nerves around the gums. Thus, the pain sensing nerves will not be able to send signals to the spinal cord, which no signal will be sent towards the brain, and no interpretation of pain will be done by the brain.

Pain sensation can also be reduced or enhanced simply from the different inputs to the brain. As explained, the brain is the organ that recognizes pain. Adrenaline is one of the things that blocks off pain sensations, so if you are playing footy extremely hard, there is a chance on an injury until the quarter has ended without noticing any pain. So your coach and teammates aren’t actually wrong, pain be reduced depending on how hard and how motivated you are playing the game.

On the flip side, if you are extremely stress, this can amplify the sensation of pain. Although the exact mechanism is not well understood, there is general consensus that emotional stress amplifies pain. That’s way when trying to recover from injury, it is important treat the pain holistically. At capital physiotherapy, we have experienced physiotherapist that understand the importance of a holistic approach to pain. If you’ve got some lingering pain that just isn’t going away, make an appointment with us by sending email at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au or visit our clinics at South Yarra, Balwyn and Footscray and we’ll customize a holistic program for you to get back to your favourite activities.

Did you just go on a run and now have lingering pain on the inside of your ankle? The pain might go away after a day or two, but as soon as you start running or doing some activity, it seems to make it worst. You’re pretty sure you didn’t roll your ankle during the run, but that ankle just seems to flare up with some activity. Sound familiar? If you’re so sure you haven’t rolled your ankle, there’s a good chance that your “tibialis posterior” muscle has been affected.

Some basic anatomy, this muscle begins from the inside of your lower leg down and its tendon runs behind the ankle to attach to the bottom of your foot. This muscle pulls the ankle inwards, helps point your toes and helps support the arch of your foot. Activities that have running and jumping places a lot of stress onto this tendon. If you recently increased your training or started a new training that requires running or jumping, there is an increase risk of sustaining injury to this tendon.

It’s a relatively long tendon, thus you can get pain anywhere along the line of this tendon. When the tendon first gets injured, there could be an inflammatory response which makes it difficult to even put weight onto that ankle. In these cases, your really need to resolve the inflammation first before placing more stress the tendon.

If the pain is lingering and not getting back to what it should be doing, you will likely need a progressive loading program before returning to your favorite activity. For this, it’s probably a good idea to see a physiotherapist to get into a individualized targeted program. At capital physiotherapy, we see many running related pain. Tibialis posterior injury is only one of many conditions which can cause pain in the ankle.

If you’re worried about what you’ve done to your ankle, give us a call at 0401 865 333, shoot us an email at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au or book in an appointment online and one of our friendly physiotherapist will take a good look at the ankle. We will set you up with a holistic, individualized program to get you back to doing what you love the most.

Everyone has experienced some degree of ankle sprains. You might have experienced it when your walking along and just mis-stepped that small curve, running down the stairs and just lost balance or somethings playing sports you land simply land awkwardly. Having experienced it, have you ever wondered exactly what is it? Some ankle sprains take much longer to heal than others. Why is this so?

As common as the injury is, the structure of the ankle isn’t simple at all. On the outside of your ankle, it is stabilized by 3 ligaments: one in the front (anterior talofibular ligament), one in the middle (calcaneofibular ligament) and one in the back (posterior talofibular ligament). On the inside of your ankle, there are 4 ligaments that stabilize the ankle, collectively known as the deltoid ligament. There’s other bones and muscles in the ankle, but we’ll stick to the ligaments for now since we are talking about ankle sprains.

The most common ankle sprain is the inversion ankle sprain, in which the outside ligament in the front gets stretched or sometimes ripped. If it’s just stretched, it’s considered a grade 1 ankle sprain. If it’s partially ripped but still intact, it’s considered a grade 2. Lastly, the injury is considered a grade 3 when the ligament is completely ruptured. Intuitively, the healing time will vary depending on the extent of it injury.

Although the ankle sprain seems like such a common injury, the ankle itself is a complexed joint consisting of multiple tendons, ligaments, nerves and muscles. If you’ve got a bit of lingering pain, feels your ankle just isn’t normal or you’re getting recurring ankle injuries, it’s a good idea to go see a physiotherapist.

At Capital physiotherapy, we have movement experts that have much experience with ankle sprains. Our physios understand the structures around the ankle and can give some solid advice to help build strength and confidence in your ankle once again. If your in South Yarra, Footscray or Balwyn, give us a call or email us at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au and one of our friendly physiotherapist will help sort out your ankle worries.