WHERE DO YOU GO WHEN YOU'RE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO? - Blog

[Guest Prosoft Admin]

You’ve got an injury and it’s just not improving. Your doctor said to just wait it out and return to activity and things would be fine…they released you but you just aren’t doing well. Your son got out of a cast and no Physical Therapy was recommended. Your daughter has been seeing someone for a while but isn’t improving.

Do you need to “just accept it” and stay the course?

Do you just keep waiting and hope things will eventually change?

How do you know it won’t come back again if nobody can explain how it started to begin with?

How far would you drive for a better answer? For someone willing to dig a little deeper? To go beyond traditional approaches that haven’t been working for you? To treat you like an individual and not a diagnosis?

PEAK PERFORMANCE can be there for you when you are looking for that expert level advice about what underlying issues might be contributing to your recurring injury or pain, or when you need more creative exercise approaches to work around your pain, when your response to treatments has stalled.

If you or someone you care about needs a consult visit to see how our functional biomechanics based approach might help put the pieces of your puzzle together better for you then give us a call at 218-0240. We’re just minutes away just off the East Rochester exit on 490.

CAN YOU PASS THE TEST?
When an athlete gets hurt it’s critical that before they get back on the court or the field that someone ensures they are truly ready and safe. It’d undoubtedly be ideal that a Sports Physical Therapist or the school’s Athletic Trainer would put your son or daughter or your athlete through testing. The skilled and knowledgable advice of a professional is preferable but it may not always be necessary. For more serious injuries that required days or weeks off then give us a call or se your school’s trainer.

But what about those more minor injuries or times when the athlete is running around and seems ready to practice but as a coach or parent you’d like a little extra reassurance and there is no trainer or Physical Therapist available what can you do?

On the show I talked about a young athlete I recently saw, Jody, who had hurt her knee and wanted badly to get back to her sport. She said her knee felt good and she could run on it and do drills. I asked her to hop up vertically on each leg and watched not only how high she could hop but how well she absorbed into the landing. We call that deceleration. It’s a key component of athletics. Unfortunately for Jody, she just couldn’t allow that knee to bend much when she landed…a sure sign her quads were still too weak.

Then I had her hop forward 3x and asked her to land and hold herself there. Once again. when forced to perform on just that one leg and not able to alternate between the two as in jogging or doing a drill, the truth came out. She just couldn’t cheat the test that well. Not only was her distance hugely different but it was obvious her knee hurt and she couldn’t decelerate into any knee bend.

Not only did I know…but more importantly maybe, Jody and her mom both could see that her knee wasn’t ready yet. So we decided to give it some more time strengthening to prepare her.

Whether it’s checking the strength and power needed for a sport, or in other cases looking at the ability to handle side to side or rotary forces to change directions or handle odd landings it’s important whenever possible to ask that body part to perform on it’s own to reduce the chance for compensation or cheating. Safety is always the first concern. That’s all the more reason it’s best to get a professional involved when possible.

But as in Jody’s case, there’s no way an athlete who has to run and cut and jump can safely return to play if they can’t handle hopping and landing on one leg. Had she done well with that test then I’d have escalated things into hopping side to side and twisting, to help give an idea how the leg handles change of direction.

Testing the arms and shoulder area is a bit tougher, since it’s unrealistic to compare a pitcher, for example, throwing a ball with their Right shoulder against their Left. Sometimes it just comes down to closely watching the quality of movements as they build up from lower intensity efforts toward higher demands. Sometimes they might be able to do single arm motions like push ups on a wall or single arm strokes in the pool.

There’s a lot that can go into choosing the right tests that are properly demanding, that are discerning enough but safe enough. That’s not an easy spot for a coach or parent to be in. That’s part of the reason we go through all the training we do.

If you’d like your athlete or son or daughter tested more thoroughly to ensure their safety before returning to play then give us a call at 218-0240. We’d be glad to help give you and your athlete some peace of mind!