When experiencing any injuries, we all turn to physiotherapy, especially to assist us through a recovery journey. But what you probably didn’t know is that along with helping people heal, physiotherapy can also prevent injuries from occurring altogether in the long term.
Particularly if you’re training for a sport where you use the same set of muscles or engage in repetitive tasks that strain a specific area of the body, they can easily cause injuries. Injured muscles, in turn, can lead to pain, stiffness, cramps, and discomfort in carrying out simple day-to-day activities. This is where we can help you through different physiotherapy interventions.
A Systematic Review For Injury Prevention
As a physiotherapist, we can assess your lifestyle, medical history, or any other previous injuries to come up with a customised plan to minimise the chances of facing any injuries in the future. While we can help you restore mobility and strength in any previously affected areas, we also focus in improving your recovery capacity in case you face any injuries.
If you’re an athlete or someone who engages in any other repetitive physical activity, we will systematically review the nature of the activity and the common injuries associated with them to recommend an appropriate plan to avoid these overuse injuries in the long run.
Injury prevention in physiotherapy can be beneficial in the workplace as well. This is where professional physio like us can assess the nature of your job, especially for those in manual labour settings and reduce the likelihood of developing chronic pain and avoid injuries during the working period.
Approaches And Methods
There are many varieties of preventive health programs that are covered under preventative physiotherapy to best suit your lifestyle, medication condition, health or fitness goals, or any other specific needs. Some include fitness testing and exercise program design, cardiovascular exercise programs, weight/diabetes management programs, sport-specific conditioning, fall prevention, prevention and management of injury in the workplace, pre-operative rehabilitation for joint replacement/reconstruction surgery and pre-operative rehabilitation for general surgery.
Normally we perform physiotherapy interventions for injury prevention in the following ways:
Education
We can educate you about the common injuries relating to the type of repetitive activity, sport, or workplace tasks you are involved in. This helps make you understand its underlying causes and the trigger point. We then recommend suitable exercises, treatments, and therapies that can assist you in preventing them. This includes educating you on the different daily measures you need to follow.
Exercises
Exercise is a crucial element in physiotherapy. Preventative physiotherapy exercises can help you focus on strengthening your muscles, tendons, and soft tissues to improve mobility and balance. The benefits of these exercises give you the capacity to prevent the risk of encountering injuries and speed recovery ability.
Massage Therapy
We often use massage therapy in preventative physiotherapy to stimulate muscles, nerves, and soft tissues to promote healing with improved mobility and strength. It also helps to relieve tension from any stressed area of the body, thereby reducing the possibility of injuries.
Posture Training
Depending on your sport, work, or any other daily repetitive tasks, we can educate and train you on healthy postures and body positioning, to avoid the development of pain and stress and reduce the likelihood of facing injuries in the long run.
According to popular wisdom, everybody knows prevention is better than cure, which is why achieving a healthy physical state is in prevention itself. Talk to a professional physiotherapist about the preventative measures you might need to take depending on your medical history, living or working environment, and lifestyle.
