If you are unfortunate enough to suffer from a sports injury, then you will probably be told that you need to see a “sports physiotherapist”. In fact, Sports Physiotherapy is one of the services we offer at our Macclesfield Clinic – but what is sports physiotherapy and how does it differ from general physiotherapy?

In all honesty, there isn’t really a difference between sports physiotherapy and general physiotherapy as the techniques used are very similar. The main difference really comes down to the end goal for the patient as if you have a sports injury then your end goal will probably be to get back to being able to do the sport you love as quickly as possible.

Athletes, for example, are required to perform at a high level and have a lot of demand placed on their body which may stress their bones, joints and muscles to the limit. As physiotherapists who deal with sports injuries regularly, we can help athletes to recover from injury more quickly, and offer suggestions for things they could do to help prevent more problems in the future.

If you suffer a sports-related injury then whoever you see to help with it needs to have a knowledge of what your sport entails including all aspects of its training and its game/match/event.

This knowledge tends to fall into one or more of the following categories:

• skill
• endurance
• speed
• power
• flexibility

Sports injuries can be new (acute), or chronic (been there a long time!). As with most other injuries some can be niggles that simply refuse to go away. The key then is to get to the root cause of the problem.  Our experience has shown us that there is often more than one contributing factor towards why it has happened and why it is persisting.  If you just treat “X marks the spot”, i.e. the symptom and not the cause, then, unfortunately, most things won’t settle or will keep reoccurring.

At Hogan & Mitchell, we diagnose the root cause, and then treat you and rehabilitate you in a way that is specific to your sport. Our aim (and hopefully yours!) is to return you to your full sporting peak as quickly as possible and to fully understand and prevent any recurrence of your injury.   After all, Great rehab = Great performance.

So, if you want to recover from a sports injury and return to what you love quickly, then get in touch and speak to sports physio’s who really know what they are talking about. Just give us a call on 01625 422 825. In case you didn’t know we are the physios for Macclesfield Blues Rugby who compete in the National 2 North Division League now.