People don’t just come to Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic to have existing injuries treated – many of our patients also rely on us to help with injury prevention, too.
One of the advantages of offering the wide range of services that we do is that we can recommend a variety of complementary treatments to a patient to reduce the chances of an injury recurring in the future.
One of the best examples of this is our podiatry service. Podiatry at Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic is about far more than just your feet: it involves a thorough assessment of how your feet and lower limbs work.
Podiatry at Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic
Newcastle Sports Injury Clinic’s experienced and highly-qualified podiatry practitioners – you can read more about them here [link will be added] – will examine everything up to and including the hip, knee and pelvis.
The assessment focuses on the movement of the joints in the foot, foot posture and how this can affect the lower limb, including the knee and hip. Our podiatrists will identify whether a patient’s injury is caused by poor structural alignment or function by assessing a patient’s biomechanical structure, using a range of techniques, including hi-tech biomechanical gait analysis (more on that in a future blog), which examines the way you run in very fine detail.
Preventing injury with podiatry
There are many factors that can influence how prone your body is to injury. Identifying and eliminating weaknesses can help you to remain injury free. Excessive or incorrect motion in the feet as they strike or leave the ground can cause, or contribute to, injury to the knees and hips, and even cause lower back pain.
Identifying the mechanism of injury is key to minimising the chance of further injury in the future.
Podiatry to improve performance
Podiatry can actually be used to improve performance; it’s not just about injuries. Podiatry is an especially popular service with runners who are looking to take their performances to the next level. Running is an unforgiving sport because weaknesses and slight imperfections in running style are very exposed: every slight problem can add a fraction of a second with every stride. Whether you run the 100m or a marathon, those fractions quickly add up.
By identifying the biomechanical cause of problems, and taking measures to improve them, potentially significant gains can be made.
Even if you feel you have a very good running style, a biomechanical assessment might discover slight issues that you weren’t aware of that if corrected, could improve your performance or prevent injury further down the line.
Lower limb circuits
One service we offer that works well alongside podiatry is our lower limb circuits. These are classes that have been specifically designed by our team of therapists experienced in injury rehabilitation and safe strengthening techniques.
Our lower limb circuit classes can help deliver: increased strength, increased muscular endurance, maintained joint health and function, more agility, increased proprioception, more flexibility, reduced injury risk and improve sporting performance.
