I’ve written this blog plenty of times in my head, and now, with my 7 month old baby asleep on my lap I thought I would give it a go.
In essence this is a case study on myself, and I’m fully aware that no two pregnancies are the same, but I do feel I learnt a few things along the way that I could share, that may just help someone else…
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.
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…
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.
We’ve been doing our online consultations for a week now and the feedback from patients has been great. It might not be the same as having hands on therapy which gives you the temporary pain relief and mobility to do your exercises, but the video consultations allow us to give you exercises for what equipment you have in the home, allow us to see your new desk set up, review your current exercises, progress them, add new ones in for the crazy online exercise programmes everyone has been doing at home and to put your mind at ease about whatever you are experiencing.
I’ve been a qualified physiotherapist for over ten years now and I have heard literally thousands of people during that time talk about their ‘really bad back pain’. And to be honest, I never really got it. Patients would complain of severe, unremitting back pain that was there constantly. There was always a little part of my brain that thought, there is no way that this person has pain 24 hours a day.
