How can RHP Physiotherapy help you?
Fitness, weight loss, racing, or as part of their training for another sport such as football or hockey. For an individual sport such as running, two major factors determine how well or how fast you run – your physiology and your biomechanics.
Physiology is all about how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen and fuel to your working muscles. Biomechanics, on the other hand, look at how efficiently and smoothly your muscles and joints work. The more efficient you are, the less oxygen needed per stride, and hence the faster or longer you can run for.
Interestingly enough, getting your biomechanics perfected has another benefit other than enhancing your performance – the same biomechanics which make you go faster are also those which reduce your chance of developing a running-related injury such as shin splints or ITB friction syndrome.
Assessments will include:
Our job as physiotherapists and massage therapists is to optimise your biomechanics (whereas you and your coach work together to improve your physiology by setting up – and sticking to! – a training program). RHP Physiotherapy has long been known for its expertise in running analysis. In fact, few other clinics place as much emphasis on this skill.
We consider a holistic analysis of running technique essential to identifying any biomechanical faults that may be affecting performance or causing injury.
The site of injury is often far removed from the site of the biomechanical fault. For example, a common problem that many runners will have heard about is excessive foot pronation (where the arch of the foot collapses), which can cause the knee and hip to roll in as well, resulting in an unstable pelvis and extra pressure on the lower back and potentially resulting in lower back pain. In this example, finding a long-term solution to lower back pain would require the correction of foot pronation, since this was the key factor in the chain reaction of problems.
All of our physiotherapists at RHP Physiotherapy are highly trained in the treatment of biomechanical running injuries and in enhancing performance by optimising your biomechanics. We understand your needs as a runner and are eager to help you achieve your goals.