Sports Injury Physiotherapy

Injuries commonly treated

• Ankle sprains, including recurrent instability after inadequate first-time rehabilitation.
• Knee ligament and meniscus injuries, both conservatively managed and post-operative.
• Hamstring, calf, quadriceps and groin strains.
• Shoulder injuries — rotator cuff problems, instability and throwing-related pain.
• Tendon problems including tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, Achilles and patellar tendinopathy.
• Shin pain, stress-related bone pain and overuse injuries from running.
• Lower back pain related to training load or technique.

The four stages of sports rehabilitation

1. Settle the acute stage — protect the injured tissue, control swelling, and restore comfortable range of motion. Complete immobilisation is avoided unless it is specifically indicated.
2. Rebuild strength — progressive loading of the injured tissue and everything supporting it. This is the stage most self-managed injuries skip, and the main reason they recur.
3. Restore control and power — balance, landing mechanics, change of direction and sport-specific movement patterns at increasing speed.
4. Return to sport testing — objective comparison against the uninjured side, and graded reintroduction to training before full competition.

Why load management matters more than rest

Tendon and muscle problems in particular respond to correctly dosed loading, not to complete rest. Tendons that are rested entirely tend to become less tolerant of load, so returning to sport reproduces the pain immediately. The skill is finding the level of loading that stimulates adaptation without provoking a flare — which changes week to week as you improve.

This is also why generic exercise sheets underperform. The right exercise at the wrong intensity is the wrong exercise. Sessions include reassessment so the dose keeps pace with your recovery.

Preventing the next injury

The strongest predictor of a sports injury is having had a previous one, usually because the underlying deficit was never addressed. Rehabilitation therefore looks past the injured structure — at the hip strength behind a knee problem, the ankle mobility behind a calf strain, or the training spike that preceded the whole thing.

Where relevant we will go through training load, warm-up structure and technique factors, so the same injury is less likely to return once you are back playing.