Category: Physiotherapy

The role of the hip flexors:

The hip flexor muscles include the iliacus and psoas major. Together these muscles act to lift the thigh up closer to the abdomen, which is the movement known as hip flexion. Excessive tightness of the hip flexor muscles is more likely to occur in certain people. It can lead to biomechanical abnormalities and be a source of pain. 

People that are more prone to hip flexor tightness:

People that have occupations that involve prolonged periods of sitting are prone to hip flexor tightness as the hips are in a sustained flexed position during sitting. People that engage in regular exercise such as running and cycling are also more prone to tight hip flexors. Sportspeople playing kicking sports such as soccer and football are also more likely to experience excessive flexor tightness as the kicking motion involves repetitive hip flexion movements. 

The consequences of tight hip flexors: 

Tight hip flexors can be a local source of pain around the hip joint which can be present during prolonged periods of sitting or during sporting activities that utilise the hip flexor muscles. Excessive tightness of the hip flexors can change lumbo-pelvic posture as it pulls the pelvis into an anteriorly tilted position. Increased anterior pelvic tilt increases the curve within the lumbar spine (lordosis) which in turn can cause the facet joint of the lumbar spine to be compressed more and tighten up surrounding back extensor muscles such as the erector spinae; this can lead to associated lower back pain. 

Tight hip flexors and altered alignment of the pelvis can also lead to over-activity of the hip flexor muscles and altered neuromuscular activity of the gluteal and core muscles which can further be a source of hip pain. 

Keeping in mind these exercises are just the basic exercise that we start off with to fully fix your knee injuries you will still need to continue to progress to harder and more functional exercises in order to feel pain free.

Here at Capital Physiotherapy, our physiotherapists are the experts in helping you to fix your hip/groin issues as well as all the discomfort that comes with it!

We can help you lead a healthier and pain free lifestyle. 

Our physiotherapist will be able to give an individualised advice/ treatment plan that is tailored for your particular needs.

 At Capital Physiotherapy, your initial appointment is 40-60minutes long. This allows our physios to be thorough in their assessment, as well as giving them enough time to give you treatment on the same consultation! 

If you have physiotherapy concerns and questions, don’t hesitate visit us at any of our clinics like in Footscray suburb or you may do online booking with us. We also provide Telehealth Consultation for your safety and convenience during this pandemic.

Waking up with heel pain in the morning?

Do you experience heel pain first thing in the morning when you take your first few steps going to the bathroom?

If you are experiencing pain at this part of your heel, you most likely have what we call Plantar Fasciitis or the new term as we were told it’s called “plantar fasciopathy” or “plantar fasciosis”.

The plantar fascia is a thick, weblike ligament that connects your heel to the front of your foot. It acts as a shock absorber and supports the arch of your foot, helping you walk.

Too much pressure on your feet can damage the ligaments in turn causing this structure to be inflamed or degenerate faster making it painful and stiffness.

Symptoms:

• The pain is usually worse in the morning when you take your first steps out of bed
• if you’ve been sitting or lying down for a while, the first few steps that you take will normally be painful
•  Climbing the stairs can be 
• After prolonged activity on your feet causes it to flare up and People with plantar fasciitis don’t usually feel pain during the activity, but rather just after stopping.

So how can we fix this problem?

1. Ice and anti inflammatory drug
2. Change footwear with good support and heel pad 
3. Golf ball stretches
4. Calf stretch

Here at Capital Physiotherapy, our physiotherapists are the experts in helping you to fix your foot issues as well as all the discomfort that comes with it!

We can help you break this habit and lead a healthier and pain free lifestyle. 

Our physiotherapist will be able to give you individualised advice/ treatment plan that is tailored for your particular needs.

 At Capital Physiotherapy, your initial appointment is 40-60minutes long. This allows our physios to be thorough in their assessment, as well as giving them enough time to give you treatment on the same consultation! 

If you have questions and concerns about physiotherapy, don’t hesitate to give our South Yarra physio at 0401 865 333 or you can do online booking. We also provide Telehealth Consultation for your safety and convenience during this time.

If you are experiencing pain right at this area while you are running and sometimes it travel up to your leg then you most likely suffers from what we call Posterior Tibial Tendonitis.

This problem is commonly seen in runners or hikers.

This muscle is located in the deep compartment of the lower leg, and is a key stabilising muscle of the ankle, supporting the medial arch of the foot.

So what causes your muscles to start hurting?

1.  Incorrect technique used over a period of time (running or hiking)
2.  Flat Feet; People who suffer from these problems either have flat feet to begin with or develop a flat foot if this issue is not properly fixed and it can lead to multiple other ankle injuries when left untreated.
3. Weak ankle stabiliser muscles– because the ankle stabiliser are weak they are unable to cope the the amount of load that you are trying to put them through with your activities hence they started getting injured
4. Weak Calf muscles;The bigger muscles group are suppose to do most of the work such as running or long distance hiking however if they are weak, your stabiliser muscles will have to do dual task both stabilising the ankle joint and also helping to do the actual movement, so inevitably, it gets overworked leading to injuries

How to fix it?

1. Hence to go about fixing this problem we first need to correct your technique 
2. Then we need to improve your flat feet issues 
3. Strengthen your injured ankle stabiliser muscles (Tibialis Posterior)
4. Strengthen your calf muscles so they are strong enough to do the activities you want them to do! 

Here at Capital Physiotherapy, our physiotherapists are the experts in helping you to fix your ankle issues as well as all the discomfort that comes with it!

Our Physiotherapy Clinics in Melbourne

If you have been diagnosed with:

• Shoulder tendinitis
• Shoulder bursitis
• Rotator cuff injury
• Bicep tendonitis

Most shoulder injuries are caused by poor biomechanic of :

1. shoulder blade movement and also

2. poor shoulder joint control

Basic shoulder joint explanation.

Video About Impingement

1. kinesiology of scapular 

2. kinesiology of shoulder joint

As these injuries are mostly due to poor shoulder blade control which leads to you constantly putting your shoulder stabiliser muscles at risk of injuries.

You then might ask “ So what can you do to start improving your shoulder blade muscles control?”

We do have a useful video over here so don’t forget to check it out after this video.

The most recent video teaches the basic exercise that we normally give for most clients with shoulder injuries.

Keeping in mind these exercises are just the basic exercise that we start off with to fully fix your shoulder injuries you will still need to continue to progress to harder and more functional exercises in order to feel pain free in your daily activities.

Here at Capital Physiotherapy, our physiotherapists are the experts in helping you to fix your shoulder issues as well as all the discomfort that comes with it!

We can help you break this habit and lead a healthier and pain free lifestyle. 

If you are suffering from should pain or any physiotherapy concerns, you may visit one of our clinics near you or book online using this link. We also provide Telehealth Consultation for your safety and convenience during this pandemic.

Hip popping is also known as “Snapping hip syndrome”

SHS is more common in women, though it can affect people of all genders and ages.

There are three main types of snapping hip syndrome:

• Internal. Usually caused by your hip flexor muscles rubbing against a bony prominence at your hip 
• External. Usually caused by your side hip muscles rubbing against a bony prominence. 

The youtube video that we created will show you some simple exercises that will help kick start your internal and external snapping hip problem.

• Intra-articular. In this category, a snapping hip is caused by an actual hip joint issue or injury. Unlike external or internal SHS, intra-articular SFS isn’t caused by a tendon or muscle. There is actual structural damage to the actual hip joint  such as cartilage, labrum tear etc.

These are actual joint damage and I highly recommend you go see a physiotherapist to get it treated ASAP. You don’t always have to end up in surgery in these cases but it is also not something you can fix on your own 🙂

Here at Capital Physiotherapy, our physiotherapists are the experts in helping you to fix your posture/alignment issues as well as all the discomfort that comes with it!

Our Physiotherapy Clinics in Melbourne

We’ve had some people ask us about ‘trigger finger’ over at our youtube channel. So we wanted to write today’s blog on this topic to help our readers.

Before we answer what ‘trigger finger’ is, let’s have a look at the anatomy of our hands.

Yes we have muscles and tendons in our hands and fingers. More importantly for today’s topic, you can see in the image above these ‘pulleys’. These are sheaths where our tendons run through. These allow our muscle and tendon to control our fingers a lot more effectively and provides our ability to be more accurate in using our hands and fingers. 

In Trigger Finger, these sheaths become inflamed and swollen. At this stage, you may only feel a slight discomfort. However, with prolonged aggravation, the tendon itself then becomes inflamed and thickened. This is where things become serious and where most people finally come in for treatment. More severe cases would have the finger ‘stuck’ in a bent position, hence the name ‘trigger finger’.

What do I do?

First of all, it’s important that you stop any hand/finger intensive activities. You need to rest that hand. You will also have to ice the hand diligently, I would suggest every 1 hour for 10 minutes. Depending on the severity, you may do some very gentle stretches, but only up to your comfortable level.

I would suggest seeing your physiotherapist, where they can assess the severity and more importantly, come up with a treatment plan. It is important that you get this looked at and treated soon, as prolonged pain can result in poorer treatment outcome as well as chronic pain and inability to do your normal activities.

At Capital Physiotherapy, your initial appointment is 1 hour long. This allows our physios to be thorough in their assessment, as well as giving them enough time to give you treatment on the same consultation! 

If you have questions regarding any physiotherapy related concerns, contact us at any of our clinic near you or drop us an email at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au. We also offer Telehealth Consultation, please check out this link for more information.

Tennis/Golfers/Climbers

You may have heard of corticosteroid injection (CSI) or autologous blood injection (ABI) to help relieve pain from your tennis or golfers elbow. CSI is when corticosteroid is injected to your tendons where it has the ability to act as an anti-inflammatory. CSI is a very strong drug in which it can control symptoms of pain, however, there are risks of long-term use of CSI. The risks include:

• Induced osteoporosis 
• Impaired ligament repair 
• Injection site reaction

ABI is a medical procedure whereby your blood is injected into your tendon to stimulate a healing process for the tendon. Although, these procedures may seem promising to reduce your pain, evidence has suggested that CSI provides short-term pain relief (Coombes et al., 2010), but there were worse outcomes a year after CSI (Coombes et al., 2013). Comparatively, ABI has shown to have a better effect than CSI, but only lasting effects of 6 months to one year after multiple injections (Chou et al., 2016; Elmajee et al., 2016).

A more preferable, non-invasive and friendly treatment for tennis/golfer’s elbow is to visit a physiotherapist for the management of your elbow pain. Physiotherapy has more benefits and have fewer to no risks compared to CSI and ABI. Tennis/golfer’s elbow is a condition where the tendons of your elbow are affected and painful. Although, tendons LOVE load, they are very sensitive to change of loads. Change of loads are:

• Increased activity of the arms above what it is normally used to. For example, if you normally work at a computer job, then you start gardening.  
• Change of tools. Tools come in different weight and size and a slight change of tools can change the load of the tendons. 
• Using the arms in a different way 
• A quick change of arm movement. For example, quickly catching a falling object may be a movement you’re not used to and can be the tipping point of what your tendon can tolerate 

At Capital Physiotherapy, a physiotherapist can help explore management strategies of your elbow pain. If you require advice on CSI, ABI, and physiotherapy, we are conveniently located at South Yarra, Footscray, and Balwyn. You may drop an email at info@capitalphysiotherapy.com.au or do an online booking here.