Kate Stalker
Top ten tips to get the most out of your physio ...

Want to get the most out of your physio sessions? Here are some top tips to ensure that you do!

Top ten tips to get the most out of your physio appointment
Exercise, Health & Wellness, Physical Therapy, Physiotherapy, Sport, Sports Therapy
Kate Stalker
How to get moving and keep moving this year

There is nothing quite like a new year’s resolution to get you starting something. That’s really the easy bit, the tough bit is keeping it up. You’re likely feeling fat and unfit after a festive season of excess, and whilst it is good to indulge ourselves now and again, let’s be honest if you carry on with that trajectory, you’re likely to have more than a few kilos by this time next year, you might even pick up a few illnesses and long term issues along the way too. Remember that low fitness kills more people than smoking, diabetes and obesity combined and that physical inactivity is associated with a higher risk for severe Covid19. If it’s not just your body you are worried about Google ‘Scholarly articles about the psychological benefits of exercise’ and you will find literally thousands of articles talking about combatting stress, decrease in suicidal thoughts, improved self-esteem, academic improvements in children, improved mood and quality of life etc etc. Exercise really is medicine.

How to get moving and keep moving this year
Kate Stalker
Injury and Fatigue

This study aimed to look at injuries in rugby union over 2 seasons in both male and female amateur rugby players.

The most common injuries in men and women were concussion and ankle ligament sprains, and ACL injuries causing the most playing time lost.

THE REALLY INTERESTING BIT: 83% of non-contact injuries for women happened in the last quarter of the game…

Injury and Fatigue
Physiotherapy, Exercise, cricket, Sport
Kate Stalker
Cricket Workloads in Kids

Spinal stress fractures, Severe’s Disease, Osgood Schlatter’s Disease amongst other things are the scourge of every young cricketing team. With my background in academy cricket physio and national pathway cricket, I now find myself working in private practice based at a cricket ground and so still see a lot of young cricketers, and the stories really haven’t changed that much. School, club and county are all competing for time with the kids, and parents either feel pressured or are doing the pressurising of the kids to do all of the training and matches laid on by all of the entities. Coupled with the fact that children no longer play in seasons, a perfect storm begins to brew.

Cricket Workloads in Kids
Kate Stalker
Teenage muscle strength and flexibility

In this really interesting study in the International Journal of Sports Physiotherapy, male and female basketball players aged 14-18 were compared for overall strength, strength ratios between quads and hamstrings, and flexibility.

Teenage muscle strength and flexibility
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The Actual Truth About Exercise

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It was with much enthusiasm that many of my patients came in saying they had seen the BBC programme: Horizon: The Truth About exercise (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq) in which most people who saw the programme gleaned that they only had to do 3 minutes of exercise, once a week and all would be well. In summary  the guy did 3 minutes of High Intensity Training a week, and it changed his INSULIN SENSITIVITY. His aerobic capacity did not change as he is a ‘non-responder’ to exercise. That is all. What the programme did not claim was that 12 minutes of exercise a month gave you all the other benefits of exercise (and I’m talking 30 minutes of medium intensity exercise a day).

These benefits include:

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Where injuries come from

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In my practice probably the most common question I get asked is... ‘how did this happen?’, ‘where did my injury come from?’, ‘why has this happened?’ when really I think the most important thing is that we need to stop it from happening again!

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My icing protocol

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This is my icing protocol for an acute injury. It comes from years of experience working in professional sport, and this had the best results of any combination of icing I could find. It is brutal unfortunately, and sleep is interrupted unless you have an icing machine that comes on automatically.

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To rest is to rust

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I’ve pretty much heard all the sayings out there with regards to injury.. ‘if it came on it’s own, it’ll leave on it’s own’, ‘rest cures all’, ‘stretching fixes everything’. But imagine your car breaks down, you park it in the garage for 3 weeks, and then 3 weeks later expect to drive it, as normal as soon as you back it out of the driveway.., a solution to the problem? Doubtful! 

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The Idiots Guide to Physiotherapy

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New patients who have never had physio before are always filled with a little trepidation when coming through my door as they have no idea what to expect so I thought I would just fill you in on what to expect, and what you SHOULD expect from a visit to the physio...

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Let's get moving

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I see a lot of patients every day with pain, and so often their story goes... I used to go to the gym regularly, but about 3 months ago I stopped’, or ‘I just don’t have time for exercise’, or ‘I hate going to the gym because it’s boring’. My point is though, that those people are in pain for a reason: they’re weak, they’re unfit, they’re often overweight and they probably haven’t taken a deep breath in MONTHS