Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy
Musculoskeletal physiotherapists provide advice and treatment for a wide range of orthopaedic and rheumatological conditions that affect joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons – for example, sports injuries, lower back pain, complex pain conditions and after some surgical procedures.
Following a thorough assessment of each individual, we help people understand the cause of their problem, how best to manage their own condition and how to prevent it from becoming an ongoing issue. Treatment plans are formulated to provide the best care possible for each individual. There is not a one size fits all formula when it comes to musculoskeletal injury. Treatments may include manual therapy and strengthening exercises, along with advice and education.
Our experienced team of physiotherapist are highly skilled and ready to help you with your injury. All our staff are members undertake regular training to keep up with current best practice. We also meet regularly to discuss challenging cases. This helps us to ensure all individuals are receiving the best treatment possible for their musculoskeletal complaint.
Our team of physiotherapists can:
- Relieve or reduce pain
- Provide you with education and strategies to best manage your injury
- Help you get back to your normal activities in the best time frame possible
- Improve your flexibility, strength, quality of movement and balance
- Assist in the achievement of your exercise and functional goals
- Improve your fitness
- Help prevent further injury recurrences
- Prescribe you with exercises to do at home to enhance your recovery
- Refer for further assessment with specialists if required
What we treat
No matter what you do, injury is often part of it. Our Physiotherapist like to work with you to maximise your participation while you are injured. There are often restrictions we can put in place that still allows participation without compromising the recovery of your injury. For example, if you participate in an exercise class and have hurt your calf muscle, it may not be necessary to avoid the class for several weeks while you heal, there is a good chance you can continue to participate while modifying exercises that would increase pain.
At APC Physiotherapy we recommend getting all injuries assessed as soon as you can. This ensures you get the right management information for you and will help you back to you chosen pursuit as soon as possible.
Some of the conditions we commonly see within our clinic
Sporting/Exercise Injuries
- Running: Often these are attributed to doing ‘too much too soon’, not allowing the musculoskeletal system time to adjust to a new endeavour.
- Netball/Basketball: knees and ankles are commonly injured in these sports. This can from both traumatic injury or poor biomechanics when jumping and landing
- Tennis/Squash: These sports can cause injuries in many areas of the body. Shoulders, hips and knees are often painful as a result of the quick and frequent changes in direction required in these sports
- Football: Often we see footballers for groin, hamstring, and calf injuries. They also frequently present with knee injuries such as ACL ruptures
- Dancing: Due to the repetitive movements dancing requires it can cause increased stress on the musculoskeletal system. Dancers both professional and recreational can experience a wide range of injuries
- Cricket: Bowling a cricket ball requires a unique action and can place unusual forces through the body. Most often cricketers present with shoulder and lower back pain.
- Rugby/League: These are dynamic and high contact sports meaning almost any injury is possible. Most commonly players present with sprains and muscle strains.
- Swimming: with the repetitive nature of swimming, it can place high levels of stress on the shoulders. Commonly swimmers will present with rotator cuff problems.
- Gym: With the popularity of high intensity programs increasing, we often find that people are trying to exercise outside of there current abilities. This overloads the whole body and can result in a wide range of strains and sprains to muscles and joints.
Occupational overuse injuries
These injuries occur overtime because of a repetitive task or sustained postures. They cause pain, stiffness, and changes to the way you move.
Office workers
As long periods of time are often spent in one position this can overload certain areas of the body, resulting in pain and stiffness. With people working from home, we are also seeing more areas of pain as people change their working postures.
Joint pain
Often people assume or are told that their joint pain is because of osteoarthritis. Even osteoarthritis is evident in a joint there is still things you can do to maximise the function of the affected joint. More often joint pain is related to sprains or strains of the soft tissues that support them. You will experience pain, loss of movement. Commonly injuries joints include spine, ankles, knees and shoulders.
Posture Issues
Posture gets a bad reputation when it comes to causes of pain. Often our jobs, hobbies and general life require use of very similar postures which place stress on the same areas repeatedly. This causes muscle imbalances within our body forcing us to continue to move in a certain way which can lead to stiffness and pain. Working with a physiotherapist can identify the problem areas and allow you to build the strength and flexibility required to access different movement patterns and place less stress on the painful areas.
Post-Surgery Rehabilitation
Following surgery, it is important to improve pain and movement of the affected joint to allow return of function. Commonly we see patients following Knee and shoulder surgery. We also see people following joint replacements. In post-surgical cases we work with the guidelines given by your surgeon to ensure best outcomes.