13 Aug August ’20 Newsletter
Well hello August! While we’re loving being back in some sort of routine with our classes and appointments, we are of course taking extra care and safety measures. We’re sending our thoughts to our Melbourne neighbours, and encourage everyone to keep doing the right thing.
This month we touch on how we’ve stepped up our Covid response, and given the soccer and netball seasons are now in full swing, we chat about sports injuries. Our Education Quarter focuses on balance (it’s kind of important!). Enjoy!
Our Covid response: Next steps
Following recent Government recommendations, and with everything that is happening in Melbourne, we’ve stepped up our Covid response and staff are now wearing masks, on top of our extensive cleaning and safety measures. Patients are not required to wear masks, but of course, it is completely up to you. Remember if you are showing any signs of cold or flu, have a temperature, or any Covid symptoms, please stay at home and call us on 9438 1782.
Sports injuries and treatment
Rugby is back, and so is soccer and netball, among many other sports. But often with sports, come injury (especially in winter!). Our sports injury physios have combined qualifications in Exercise Science as well as Physiotherapy to provide unique expertise in treating and preventing sports injuries. Our aim is to commence treatment as early as possible and implement a rehabilitation program that will get you back playing sport as quickly as possible.
One of the key benefits of St Leonards Physiotherapy is our access to the gym and our treatment rooms at Norths Fitness. It allows us to provide the full spectrum of treatment from initial treatment to gym-based strength and rehabilitation programs that ensures a quick and successful return to sport.
Our Service Areas
Depending on your problem, our treatment techniques may include:
– Joint mobilisation therapy
– Spinal mobilisation therapy
– Manipulation
– Massage
– Postural advice/education
– Exercise programs/advice
– Core stability training
– Ergonomic and workstation assessments and advice
– Dry needling / acupuncture
– Muscle energy techniques
– Balance training and re-education
– Gait (walking/running) retraining
– Strength and rehabilitation program and training
So, whether you are a weekend warrior or experienced athlete, we have your sports injuries covered. If you have any niggles, pain, injury or other issues, call us today on 9438 1782.
The Education Quarter
Exercises to improve balance
Hey everyone! We’re here this month to hit you with some excellent exercises to improve your balance. We’ve put in some easy ones and some more challenging ones. Read forth to get your balance on!
Why balance?
Balance is an essential part of our overall fitness. It’s just as important as the strength, power, flexibility, and endurance aspects of fitness. We need good balance to stay on our feet and be able to perform our daily tasks and leisure activities. Without balance, we’d find it very hard to stay upright on two feet and ultimately, fall down. Our ability to balance is affected when we injure ourselves. It is particularly affected with lower limb injuries, such as ankle ligament sprains and fractures. These types of injuries affect the body’s ability to know where your joints and limbs are in space – a phenomena known as ‘proprioception’. When we lose this ability, we need to retrain it to ensure we get back to full fitness.
It is important to know that a large aspect of balance relates to the proper functioning of our vision and inner ear systems. This can be the topic of a different blog in the future. The following exercises are good to help improve our proprioception, as previously mentioned.
Exercises
Let’s get you started with some easy to incorporate exercises for everyday life:
Stand up from a chair without using your hands: Try this one on different chair types. But no pushing off with the hands! Get your centre of balance right and push up with those legs to stand upright.
Stand on one leg: You can do this pretty much anywhere, at any time. We suggest standing on one leg when you are brushing your teeth. That’s two lots of two-minute single leg stands every day. Easy! Want to make it harder? Try some one-legged squats or touch your toe with your opposite hand while balancing on one foot (not with your toothbrush in your mouth though!) 😊
Walk heel-to-toe: Imagine you are in the circus on a tightrope, walking in a straight line. Spend some time each day walking this way to challenge and improve your ability to balance. It’s harder than you think.
OK, let’s step it up a bit:
Draw a star: No, we don’t mean with a pencil and paper. Stand in an open space and imagine you are standing in the middle of a six or eight-point star. Standing on one leg, try to toe-tap your way around the points of the star in a clockwise and then anti-clockwise direction. Try it on both legs. When this gets easy, do the same exercise standing on a pillow or cushion to make the surface you are standing on less stable. Much harder!
Stand on a wobble board/bosu ball: You’ll need to get yourself one first! These little devices are great at testing your balance limits with their flat tops and curved bottoms. You may fall off quickly to begin with, but keep trying and you’ll improve in no time. A few minutes a day is all it takes.
Close your eyes: This will really test you. This will also make you realise how much we rely on our vision to keep our balance. Take away that vision and you are really challenging your proprioceptive capabilities. You can try any of the above exercises again with your eyes closed to make them even harder.
We advise anyone wanting to improve their balance to come and see us first for an assessment so we can prescribe you safe exercises to follow. Some of these exercises may not be suitable for everyone. If you want to try them, do them next to a tabletop or have someone close to you, so if you lose balance whilst performing them, you have a safety net. Good luck and enjoy!
Happy to help.
If you’d like to book an appointment, or have questions about any pain or injury you may be experiencing, please get in touch.