Sports Injury

Sports injuries fall into two groups, and telling them apart determines everything that follows.

Acute injuries happen in an instant: an ankle rolls, a hamstring tears, a shoulder dislocates. Overload injuries build over weeks — tendon pain, stress reactions, shin pain — and are almost always a training-load problem rather than an accident.

The overload point most people miss

Overload injuries are rarely about bad technique or the wrong shoes. They are usually about the rate of increase. Tissue adapts to load applied gradually; the same load applied suddenly injures it. Someone who goes from three kilometres to ten because a race is coming is doing the thing that causes the injury.

The stages of getting back

1. Settle it. Protect the injured tissue, manage swelling, and keep training everything else
2. Restore range and basic strength. Undo the stiffness and the muscle wasting
3. Load it properly. Heavy, progressive strengthening — the stage most self-managed recoveries skip
4. Speed and change of direction. Running mechanics, cutting, jumping, landing control
5. Sport-specific work at full intensity before you play

Return is tested, not scheduled

We compare strength of the injured side against the other, with hop and landing tests appropriate to the injury. A commonly used threshold is at least ninety per cent symmetry.

That is not caution for its own sake. Returning before those criteria are met is the single strongest predictor of doing the same injury again, and a second injury is usually a longer road than the first.

Common injuries we treat

Ankle sprains, muscle strains, ACL and knee ligament injuries, tendinopathies, shoulder instability, stress fractures and SLAP tears.