Sport Rehabilitation: What Do We Actually Do?

If you’ve never seen a Sport Rehabilitator before, you might reasonably be wondering what we actually do.

At Movement Is Strength, both Jake & Alex hold Master’s degrees in Sport Rehabilitation. Sport Rehabilitation is focused heavily on musculoskeletal injury, pain and physical rehabilitation.

Put simply, we assess and rehabilitate problems involving things like:

• muscles

• tendons

• ligaments

• joints

• back and neck pain

• nerve pain

• sports injuries

• recurring injuries

• recovery following surgery

Our training is concentrated around understanding how these injuries happen, assessing what is currently limiting you, and then helping you progressively return to the things you want to do.

What does rehabilitation actually involve?

Rehabilitation is rarely just about getting pain to disappear.

Depending on the injury and the person, treatment might involve restoring movement, rebuilding strength, improving balance or control, gradually increasing tolerance to activity and eventually progressing back towards running, gym training, work or sport.

We use things such as exercise rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, mobility work and progressive return-to-activity planning to help rebuild the physical qualities you need.

For an ankle sprain, for example, that might start with restoring movement and basic strength before progressing into balance, hopping, running and change of direction.

For somebody recovering from surgery, the initial goal might simply be restoring movement and basic function before gradually rebuilding strength over the following weeks and months.

Do you have to be an athlete?

Despite the name, absolutely not.

Sport Rehabilitators work with plenty of people who have no interest in competitive sport whatsoever.

You might have:

• back pain that is stopping you training

• knee pain when using stairs

• a shoulder problem that keeps returning

• an ankle you repeatedly sprain

• an injury from playing football at the weekend

• weakness following surgery

• pain that is stopping you doing normal day-to-day activities

The goal is based around what you need to get back to, whether that means competitive sport, returning to the gym, getting back to work or simply moving comfortably again.

Pre-operative and post-operative rehabilitation

We can also help before and after surgery.

Before surgery, improving strength, movement and general physical capacity can give you a better starting point for recovery.

After surgery, rehabilitation helps progressively restore movement, strength and function as you work towards returning to normal activity.

So when should you see a Sport Rehabilitator?

If you have a musculoskeletal injury or pain that is affecting your movement, training, sport or everyday life, that's exactly the sort of thing we're trained to assess and rehabilitate.

The aim isn't simply to get you less injured.

It's to help you rebuild the strength, movement and confidence you need to actually get back to doing the things that matter to you.