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Over the past 18 months, there has been a marked increase in the number of people presenting to the clinic with knee and lower back complaints. A variety of factors contributing to an individual’s injury or muscular imbalances. Yet a common theme among many of these clients is the lack of strength in their gluteal and trunk muscles. As a society, we are becoming weaker due the lack of awareness pertaining to position our bodies in a particular space. There is an increasing need to educate clients as to how they can improve; not only in the management of their…

Ergonomics refers to the design of a workspace best suited to the individual user.  It is not a one size fits all approach and varies significantly from office workers to labourers and everyone in between. In addition to the layout of a desk space, ergonomics encompasses all aspects of health and safety thereby minimising the risk of injury in an environment. Safe Work Australia estimates the total economic cost from work related injury and illness is $60 Billion per annum, making appropriate ergonomic set up a worthwhile investment for both individuals and employers. In hand with the rise in the…

As golfers we often hear of the typical injuries. Injuries of the elbows, forearms, lower back or lead hip. One injury that we are seeing of increasing frequency in golfers is to the lead wrist, meaning for a right handed golfer, your left wrist. Upon further questioning of an injured player it often follows hitting a ball with unexpected opposing force to the wrist at impact. This is often experienced by hitting a shot ‘fat’, out of some very thick rough or hitting an unexpected tree root when hitting out of the rough. This injury often allows you to play…

Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome: Symptoms: Pain on the outside of the hip, on or close to the bone. Pain lying on affected side Pain may refer down the outside of the thigh Pain walking up stairs, uphill or getting in and out of a car. Pain on getting up from sitting and crossing legs. Difficulty getting dressed when needing to stand on one leg or crossing leg over.   Causes: Increased compression of gluteal muscles that attach onto the bone on the side of your hip. Repetitive movements or positions where compression of tendons and bursae leads to pain. Poor…

Recent research has shown that you are able to make two subtle changes to your running technique to reduce the peak force through your knee-cap joints (patella-femoral joints) and therefore the pain.   Trunk Lean Leaning your trunk forwards (just a small amount) basically transfers some of the force from the front of your knees to the posterior muscles of your hip like your hamstrings and gluteals.    Cadence Increasing your cadence or step frequency can happen naturally with a small increase in forward trunk lean.  But you can also consciously just increase your cadence but taking faster steps but…

Hip extension in simple terms is the leg being able to swing behind you when you run.  If there is restriction at the front of the hip ie the hip flexors being too tight, the hip won’t be able to extend. This creates the following problems: The hip can’t extend so you compensate by anterior tilting the pelvis and extending the low back.  This results in low back stiffness or pain. The front of the hip is restricted so the body protects itself and doesn’t recruit the gluteus maximus properly.  The glutes get lazy so you don’t propel yourself very well, you get…