#physio crossfit

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

Peace & Love

Anyone involved in any form of sport and exercise knows the age-old acronym RICE. Rest, ice, compress, elevate. Damaged your hamstring? Your trainer will hog-tie it to your leg until it turns purple and screams with repulsion.

However, later that night, you’re at home watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire slayer, with the ice hanging there like a warm mojito, you suddenly can't remember what the trainer told you. Was it 20 minutes every 15 minutes, 20 minutes every hour, or an hour every 20 minutes? Furthermore, your partner no longer thinks it's cute that you're injured, and looking after you is getting damn tiresome.

Fear not, student of the world, I have your back (or leg), or whatever you’ve injured. Here are the answers to replenish your relationship and prevent your bed from turning into a waterbed disaster from our parent's generation (can you believe people slept on those!?)

Although our humble friend RICE has been a staple of our first-aid principles from before Christ was born, our information on body healing has changed significantly since this phrase appeared in our realms of understanding.  Yes, we know that ice has an anti-inflammatory effect and reduces blow flow, and with that swelling. And Yes, we know in some situations, this can be very helpful.

However, what if the body, and specifically the tissue, needs that blood flow? Don't look at me like I told you to keep your tomato sauce in the cupboard, peanut butter in the fridge, or tim tams in the freezer (legit a great idea, they last an eternity), but maybe blood is exactly what that tissue needs.  

Stay with me here, scholar of the world, you're doing a fantastic job.

Let me introduce you to the modern-day warrior. The next generation of healing disciples. Peace and Love. No, they're not my children's names, but perhaps when I move to Seminyak they will be. No Peace and Love is the new version of RICE. Here's an infographic to show you what I mean

Now we haven't mentioned "LOVE" here and that's because this is something that needs to be guided by your physiotherapist. LOVE starts to load up the damaged tissue and needs to be treated on a case-by-case basis depending on severity, injury location, age, recurrence of injury, sport…….

So, have you Injured yourself recently? Follow our modern-day warrior PEACE for the first 48-72 hours.

Are you ready to learn about LOVE? Sign up here for the next season of Love Island Evolutio, where 4 injured people are partnered up with a physiotherapist each on an island and have to rehabilitate.

Just kidding, if you actually want to know more, or you've injured yourself recently, book in here with me and use the code 'matesrates' for $20 off your Initial Physio Session. I'll save you days, hours and minutes off your injury, so you can spend it buying Tim tams, and playing the activities you genuinely Love that give you Peace.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

Snow Addict

I just got back from a week up at the snow with my dad. My dad is 67 years old, a self confessed snow addict, and has been eagerly awaiting old age for one reason alone. His favourite mountain (Mt Hotham, Australia), offers free season ski passes to over 70s.

So once he hits the ripe old age of 70, it will be free skiing all day, every day for the entire winter season.

But there’s just one problem. His knees are getting sore and as we all know…skiing is bad for your knees. But is it?

Dads’ backstory

In his early 20’s dad first discovered the joys of snow skiing. He made sure to get his yearly snow fix from then on, scheduling annual holidays at various ski resorts in Australia or internationally.

However in his late 30’s he had a skiing accident which resulted in a torn meniscus (cartilage that protects the bones in the knee from rubbing) in his left knee. At this time it was standard to “scrape out” (Dads words) the cartilage in the knee during surgery as treatment. In contrast to modern treatment which aims to preserve as much of this protective cartilage as possible. 

These days, Dad loves telling anyone who will listen about the disastrous results of this surgery and how he has struggled with knee pain ever since. But the truth is, he doesn’t have knee pain all the time. In fact he very rarely had any knee pain until a few years ago. That means that for at least 20 years following the surgery it wasn’t an issue. 

So what’s the real problem here? 

1. Poor rehab

Back in the day (20+ years ago), when dad had his knee surgery, there was little emphasis on post-op rehab. Dad was still fairly young and the expectation was that after surgery pain would settle and life would continue without too much fuss. Luckily he was still quite active back then which meant his strength improved to a degree and skiing was able to continue without issue – although he never did make it back to footy.

After any injury or surgery there is always some loss of strength as our body goes into protective mode and avoids use of the muscles in the area due to pain. New research has shown that this strength rarely returns to “normal” (within 5% of the other side of the body), without some targeted strengthening exercise. 

So it makes sense that since he never had a targeted strengthening rehab program, this side remained slightly weaker. Over time, this weakness will have slowly worsened. 

2. Decreased strength and fitness with age

Who remembers life as a school kid and the amount of incidental sport and activity that filled our weeks? I remember days when I would play sport at lunchtime, have a school PE class, and then follow my school day with yet another sport training session or game.

As we age our lives become filled with the extra pressures of work and family, often leaving us with less and less time for sports and exercise. This results in decreased muscle strength and endurance, and we fatigue more quickly. 

Not only this, but as we start to edge towards middle age our bodies slow down in their ability to recover and to maintain muscle strength and condition. This means slower return to fitness after any breaks, and less ease in building strength and endurance.

3. Changes in load

Everyone loves a good holiday. Relaxing by the pool in Bali, or sampling the amazing foods of Europe.

However you may have noticed that once back home and into the normal routine, you initially feel worn out at activities that would usually be easy. A few weeks off from gym or netball or even your weekly walks and healthy diet makes an impact in a very short time.

On the other hand, sometimes it can be the holiday itself that causes the increase in load. I want you to imagine your usual weekly schedule. Let’s say you work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and you spend majority of this time sitting at a desk. You still make sure to get to the gym for one hour 4-5 days per week and you’re in pretty good shape. 

Now imagine that after doing this for almost 12 months consistently, you decide to head off on an epic ski holiday where you sub out the 8 hours of sitting and instead endeavour to ski for 8 hours per day.

“HOW MANY SPORTS INVOLVE 8 HOURS STRAIGHT OF THE ACTIVITY? VERY FEW”

And how well have our bodies and muscles prepared for this sudden launch into pro-athlete level sporting demands?? Not well at all.

So when we think about this massive change in load over such short period, it makes sense that our bodies may struggle to keep up. 

The verdict

Skiing is not bad for your knees. Weakness and lack of activity is bad for your knees. Knee pain is caused by muscle fatigue and poor tracking of the knee cap not by skiing.

It’s like saying exercise is bad for your body. It’s not. Unless we do too much. Moderation is key. The right amount of exercise keeps your muscles strong, joints lubricated and body healthy, but too much exercise (like anything), causes overload and inflammation. 

So the same principal applies to skiing. Provided you are strong enough prior and not overloading, skiing is a fantastic form of strength and fitness, that like any other exercise, is only bad when you push too far past your limits to the point of overload and injury. 

This is Kristina. She’s cool, like us. She’s one of our senior physio’s with more experience in the snow than many of us have on land. You can book in with her here for a session face to face. Or here for a virtual appointment.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

Sun Tzu’s The Art of Giving

It was many centuries ago, that I was first introduced to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Young, wide-eyed and inquisitive it opened my mind to the sophistication, yet simplicity of conflict.

Fast forward on the tape and you’ll find yourself, feet floating, in a world that is as stable as ever.

Recently two of our newest team members at Evolutio, have made me realise an important point in how we got to where we are today. A position where we’re lucky enough to have treated over two thousand clients here in Melbourne over the past four years.

That point. Is the art of giving.

In life and in business, we all need to remember that giving without expecting in return, is becoming as valuable as chu gold block money from the 5th century.

It flows like the Mekong into the lake of need for humans more than ever. Personal deep friendship, giving without wanting, and listening. Three currencies that are more valuable than anything you can purchase.

Both Phill and Kristina have mentioned to me, that we need to continue to provide and give our services, skills and knowledge to those less fortunate. Without the need to receive back. Sometimes, I find myself in business, worrying about paying all our expenses and surviving, rather than thinking of what we’ve done in the past.

Perhaps focusing on giving more to others and our creative output will help us indirectly? Maybe that’s a lesson for life as well?

Let me translate Sun Tzu’s the Art of War, into modern day business.

Instead of spending hours poring over understanding your enemies, I say, spend more time knowing yourself, listening, creating, innovating and understanding everything about your allies.

Allies are those businesses that align with your strategic values, optimism and character.

If individuals within organisations know themselves, if they grow and if we know how and when to utilise the strengths of our friends, we’re always going to be one step ahead. Adaptability will be our forte for the issues that life and business will throw at us.

As soon as we start worrying more about our competition and enemies, we take time away from progressing our skills, minds and those around us that believe in what we do.

So here’s what we’ll do at Evolutio moving forward. We will worry less about trying to understand the theories of our competition and focus more on the development of ourselves. We’ll continue to give without wanting in return, and hopefully when it comes time for us to call on our friends, I’m sure they’ll be there.

Alex is leader of the free world. The actual one, not Papa doc’s. He’s the founder of Evolutio. A Sports physio clinic like you've never seen. With a layout, interior design and people who are the best in their trade.

He started Evolutio in 2013 as a primary driver for high level athletes to receive treatment, advice and guidance.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

4 Reasons your Shin Splints aren’t going away

Before we get to the reasons your still in pain after all this time. I’m going to tell you a story and question, at least the last 15-20 years of treatment for shin splints pain. In my view, over pronation is an old fashioned, poorly constructed theory for why shin splints develops. It causes tunnel vision and prevents us as practitioners and our patients from doing the necessary work to uncover the truth.

Shin splints is an old fashioned term like ‘blithering’ or ‘applesauce’. It broadly describes pain in the shin area. Which can be anything from excessive bone strain to bone stress to the fully developed stress fracture. Some people would even throw compartment syndrome into the mix, even though personally I would put this in a slightly different category. The most common, the stress syndrome a by-product of excessive bone strain over time, can develop on either inner (medial) or outer (lateral) aspects of the shin or tibia. Characterised by the stress laid out on the lower tibia from the constant yanking from muscle attachments along this wall.

Back a couple of years ago, when we were early to primary school, we were made to run around the oval non-stop until the bell would ring for the start of school. My parents, eager to get rid of me for as long as possible, would drop my off 30 minutes before school. I was a lean kid, so the little amount of muscle I had on my lower legs would cling to the bone like whiskey to a Scotsman.

The combination of this in school shoes that weighed the same as me at the time, in addition to the growth I was going through, meant that my muscles already weak and strained had to work over a longer distance and under more duress. In addition, I was now sitting in school more, apart from a short game of pokemon on the lawn at morning tea. So this was the true concoction for bone stress, not the over pronation theory I was thrown by multiple practitioners.

Here’s the deal. Take the blue pill, and you can close this blog and continue on with your life and shins the way they are. Take the red pill, and I’ll show you the real reasons your shin splints aren’t improving with rest, ice, anti-inflammatories and those orthotics.

 1.      You're looking down the wrong Rabbit Hole

When you look down the rabbit hole. All you see is a pair of bright blue orthotics giving medial arch support. You switch them between shoes, work shoes, running shoes, golf shoes, tennis shoes, dancing shoes. After a while they become part of you. You believe you can’t sleep without them. I’m going to annoy a lot of people when I say this, but I believe orthotics are just an easy road the practitioner takes to fix a more complicated issue and a money making exercise.

 2.      You’re not putting in the Time & Money to get the problem fixed.

Sometimes I’m fascinated that individuals will go a spend $2000 on getting their triumph serviced and fixed because they don’t want any issues getting to and from work. Yet tell people, they need to spend a few hundred to get their foot, ankle and leg fixed, so they can run and be active without pain and they hesitate.

I’ve seen 1000’s of clients over the years. I’m yet to see anyone who hasn’t improved if they put the work in, and listen to our instructions.

See a practitioner regularly early, follow their advice, don’t try and spread appointments out until they say so. Otherwise you’re delaying the rehabilitation and you’ll end up spending more in the long run.

 3.      You believe the Over pronation hype

You use to have cool shoes to run in. Now you run in a shoe that looks like a toned down version of the titanic. It's black or white, and sometimes when you put them on your partner walks 5m behind you.

Let’s be honest here. Your feet don’t one day start over pronating. You didn’t go to sleep with medial arches in your midfoot and wake up the next morning with flat feet.

You need to start out by utilising a practitioner with specific skill sets like those at Evolutio to find out what is working well within the 26 bones, 33 joints and 19 muscles in your foot. Improve this first then work up the leg, to improve deficiencies and compensation that has occurred as a result.

Pronation is actually necessary when you run believe it or not. The action causes force transfer through the foot, ankle and lower leg.

So don’t have tunnel vision. Open your eyes to what else could be causing your shin splints. If you come to us with your orthotics. Be careful, we might throw them under a bus.

Here’s another interesting story. Shin splints in the Military is an extremely common occurrence, especially with new and young soldiers.

I can guarantee that you can’t pronate in a military boot. In fact you can’t usually feel your toes in one. So if this is the case, wouldn’t it be more realistic that suddenly constantly pack marching, running, jumping and patrolling in a boot that weighs more than 3-4 x (when dry) a normal jogger would cause massive strain on weak and under developed lower leg muscle groups, therefore causing a version of bone stress? Rather than over pronation?

4.      You’re not seeing us at Evolutio

Enough said. We’re a friendly crew. Drop us an email at [email protected], or swing by our clinics in South Yarra or Kew and say gday. Soon we will be moving to our own facility in Richmond as we continue to grow.

 “Sooner or later you’re going to realise just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” – 

One of the dudes from the Matrix.

Alex Drew is a Physiotherapist and Founder of Evolutio which is now located at  South Yarra in addition to Kew, Melbourne.

Evolutio specialises in Physiotherapy and Podiatry treatment  for high level Sporting athletes, CrossFit athletes, Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters. 

Evolutio will soon move to a new premises in Richmond, where it aims to take over the Sports Medicine market in Melbourne.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

4 Reasons your Shin Splints aren’t going away

Before we get to the reasons your still in pain after all this time. I’m going to tell you a story and question, at least the last 15-20 years of treatment for shin splints pain. In my view, over pronation is an old fashioned, poorly constructed theory for why shin splints develops. It causes tunnel vision and prevents us as practitioners and our patients from doing the necessary work to uncover the truth.

Shin splints is an old fashioned term like ‘blithering’ or ‘applesauce’. It broadly describes pain in the shin area. Which can be anything from excessive bone strain to bone stress to the fully developed stress fracture. Some people would even throw compartment syndrome into the mix, even though personally I would put this in a slightly different category. The most common, the stress syndrome a by-product of excessive bone strain over time, can develop on either inner (medial) or outer (lateral) aspects of the shin or tibia. Characterised by the stress laid out on the lower tibia from the constant yanking from muscle attachments along this wall.

Back a couple of years ago, when we were early to primary school, we were made to run around the oval non-stop until the bell would ring for the start of school. My parents, eager to get rid of me for as long as possible, would drop my off 30 minutes before school. I was a lean kid, so the little amount of muscle I had on my lower legs would cling to the bone like whiskey to a Scotsman.

The combination of this in school shoes that weighed the same as me at the time, in addition to the growth I was going through, meant that my muscles already weak and strained had to work over a longer distance and under more duress. In addition, I was now sitting in school more, apart from a short game of pokemon on the lawn at morning tea. So this was the true concoction for bone stress, not the over pronation theory I was thrown by multiple practitioners.

Here’s the deal. Take the blue pill, and you can close this blog and continue on with your life and shins the way they are. Take the red pill, and I’ll show you the real reasons your shin splints aren’t improving with rest, ice, anti-inflammatories and those orthotics.

1.      Your looking down the wrong Rabbit Hole

When you look down the rabbit hole. All you see is a pair of bright blue orthotics giving medial arch support. You switch them between shoes, work shoes, running shoes, golf shoes, tennis shoes, dancing shoes. After a while they become part of you. You believe you can’t sleep without them. I’m going to annoy a lot of people when I say this, but I believe orthotics are just an easy road the practitioner takes to fix a more complicated issue and a money making exercise.

2.      You’re not putting in the Time & Money to get the problem fixed.

Sometimes I’m fascinated that individuals will go a spend $2000 on getting their triumph serviced and fixed because they don’t want any issues getting to and from work. Yet tell people, they need to spend a few hundred to get their foot, ankle and leg fixed, so they can run and be active without pain and they hesitate.

I’ve seen 1000’s of clients over the years. I’m yet to see anyone who hasn’t improved if they put the work in, and listen to our instructions.

See a practitioner regularly early, follow their advice, don’t try and spread appointments out until they say so. Otherwise you’re delaying the rehabilitation and you’ll end up spending more in the long run.

 3.      You believe the Over pronation hype

You use to have cool shoes to run in. Now you run in a shoe that looks like a toned down version of the titanic. It's black or white, and sometimes when you put them on your partner walks 5m behind you.

Let’s be honest here. Your feet don’t one day start over pronating. You didn’t go to sleep with medial arches in your midfoot and wake up the next morning with flat feet.

You need to start out by utilising a practitioner with specific skill sets like those at Evolutio to find out what is working well within the 26 bones, 33 joints and 19 muscles in your foot. Improve this first then work up the leg, to improve deficiencies and compensation that has occurred as a result.

Pronation is actually necessary when you run believe it or not. The action causes force transfer through the foot, ankle and lower leg.

So don’t have tunnel vision. Open your eyes to what else could be causing your shin splints. If you come to us with your orthotics. Be careful, we might throw them under a bus.

Here’s another interesting story. Shin splints in the Military is an extremely common occurrence, especially with new and young soldiers.

I can guarantee that you can’t pronate in a military boot. In fact you can’t usually feel your toes in one. So if this is the case, wouldn’t it be more realistic that suddenly constantly pack marching, running, jumping and patrolling in a boot that weighs more than 3-4 x (when dry) a normal jogger would cause massive strain on weak and under developed lower leg muscle groups, therefore causing a version of bone stress? Rather than over pronation?

4.      You’re not seeing us at Evolutio

Enough said. We’re a friendly crew. Drop us an email at [email protected], or swing by our clinics in South Yarra or Kew and say gday. Soon we will be moving to our own facility in Richmond as we continue to grow.

 “Sooner or later you’re going to realise just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” – 

One of the dudes from the Matrix.

Alex Drew is a Physiotherapist and Founder of Evolutio which is now located at  South Yarra in addition to Kew, Melbourne.

Evolutio specialises in Physiotherapy and Podiatry treatment  for high level Sporting athletes, CrossFit athletes, Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters. 

Evolutio will soon move to a new premises in Richmond, where it aims to take over the Sports Medicine market in Melbourne.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

4 Reasons your Shin Splints aren’t going away

Before we get to the reasons you’re still in pain after all this time. I’m going to tell you a story and question, at least the last 15-20 years of treatment for shin splints pain. In my view, over pronation is an old fashioned, poorly constructed theory for why shin splints develops. It causes tunnel vision and prevents us as practitioners and our patients from doing the necessary work to uncover the truth.

Shin splints is an old fashioned term like ‘blithering’ or ‘applesauce’. It broadly describes pain in the shin area. Which can be anything from excessive bone strain to bone stress to the fully developed stress fracture. Some people would even throw compartment syndrome into the mix, even though personally I would put this in a slightly different category. The most common, the stress syndrome a by-product of excessive bone strain over time, can develop on either inner (medial) or outer (lateral) aspects of the shin or tibia. Characterised by the stress laid out on the lower tibia from the constant yanking from muscle attachments along this wall.

Back a couple of years ago, when we were early to primary school, we were made to run around the oval non-stop until the bell would ring for the start of school. My parents, eager to get rid of me for as long as possible, would drop my off 30 minutes before school. I was a lean kid, so the little amount of muscle I had on my lower legs would cling to the bone like whiskey to a Scotsman.

The combination of this in school shoes that weighed the same as me at the time, in addition to the growth I was going through, meant that my muscles already weak and strained had to work over a longer distance and under more duress. In addition, I was now sitting in school more, apart from a short game of pokemon on the lawn at morning tea. So this was the true concoction for bone stress, not the over pronation theory I was thrown by multiple practitioners.

Here’s the deal. Take the blue pill, and you can close this blog and continue on with your life and shins the way they are. Take the red pill, and I’ll show you the real reasons your shin splints aren’t improving with rest, ice, anti-inflammatories and those orthotics.

1.      Your looking down the wrong Rabbit Hole

When you look down the rabbit hole. All you see is a pair of bright blue orthotics giving medial arch support. You switch them between shoes, work shoes, running shoes, golf shoes, tennis shoes, dancing shoes. After a while they become part of you. You believe you can’t sleep without them. I’m going to annoy a lot of people when I say this, but I believe orthotics are just an easy road the practitioner takes to fix a more complicated issue and a money making exercise.

2.      You’re not putting in the Time & Money to get the problem fixed.

Sometimes I’m fascinated that individuals will go a spend $2000 on getting their triumph serviced and fixed because they don’t want any issues getting to and from work. Yet tell people, they need to spend a few hundred to get their foot, ankle and leg fixed, so they can run and be active without pain and they hesitate.

I’ve seen 1000’s of clients over the years. I’m yet to see anyone who hasn’t improved if they put the work in, and listen to our instructions.

See a practitioner regularly early, follow their advice, don’t try and spread appointments out until they say so. Otherwise you’re delaying the rehabilitation and you’ll end up spending more in the long run.

 3.      You believe the Over pronation hype

You use to have cool shoes to run in. Now you run in a shoe that looks like a toned down version of the titanic. It's black or white, and sometimes when you put them on your partner walks 5m behind you.

Let’s be honest here. Your feet don’t one day start over pronating. You didn’t go to sleep with medial arches in your midfoot and wake up the next morning with flat feet.

You need to start out by utilising a practitioner with specific skill sets like those at Evolutio to find out what is working well within the 26 bones, 33 joints and 19 muscles in your foot. Improve this first then work up the leg, to improve deficiencies and compensation that has occurred as a result.

Pronation is actually necessary when you run believe it or not. The action causes force transfer through the foot, ankle and lower leg.

So don’t have tunnel vision. Open your eyes to what else could be causing your shin splints. If you come to us with your orthotics. Be careful, we might throw them under a bus.

Here’s another interesting story. Shin splints in the Military is an extremely common occurrence, especially with new and young soldiers.

I can guarantee that you can’t pronate in a military boot. In fact you can’t usually feel your toes in one. So if this is the case, wouldn’t it be more realistic that suddenly constantly pack marching, running, jumping and patrolling in a boot that weighs more than 3-4 x (when dry) a normal jogger would cause massive strain on weak and under developed lower leg muscle groups, therefore causing a version of bone stress? Rather than over pronation?

4.      You’re not seeing us at Evolutio

Enough said. We’re a friendly crew. Drop us an email at [email protected], or swing by our clinics in South Yarra or Kew and say gday. Soon we will be moving to our own facility in Richmond as we continue to grow.

 “Sooner or later you’re going to realise just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” – 

One of the dudes from the Matrix.

Alex Drew is a Physiotherapist and Founder of Evolutio which is now located at  South Yarra in addition to Kew, Melbourne.

Evolutio specialises in Physiotherapy and Podiatry treatment  for high level Sporting athletes, CrossFit athletes, Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters. 

Evolutio will soon move to a new premises in Richmond, where it aims to take over the Sports Medicine market in Melbourne.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

4 Reasons your Shin Splints aren’t going away

Before we get to the reasons you’re still in pain after all this time. I’m going to tell you a story and question, at least the last 15-20 years of treatment for shin splints pain. In my view, over pronation is an old fashioned, poorly constructed theory for why shin splints develops. It causes tunnel vision and prevents us as practitioners and our patients from doing the necessary work to uncover the truth.

Shin splints is an old fashioned term like ‘blithering’ or ‘applesauce’. It broadly describes pain in the shin area. Which can be anything from excessive bone strain to bone stress to the fully developed stress fracture. Some people would even throw compartment syndrome into the mix, even though personally I would put this in a slightly different category. The most common, the stress syndrome a by-product of excessive bone strain over time, can develop on either inner (medial) or outer (lateral) aspects of the shin or tibia. Characterised by the stress laid out on the lower tibia from the constant yanking from muscle attachments along this wall.

Back a couple of years ago, when we were early to primary school, we were made to run around the oval non-stop until the bell would ring for the start of school. My parents, eager to get rid of me for as long as possible, would drop my off 30 minutes before school. I was a lean kid, so the little amount of muscle I had on my lower legs would cling to the bone like whiskey to a Scotsman.

The combination of this in school shoes that weighed the same as me at the time, in addition to the growth I was going through, meant that my muscles already weak and strained had to work over a longer distance and under more duress. In addition, I was now sitting in school more, apart from a short game of pokemon on the lawn at morning tea. So this was the true concoction for bone stress, not the over pronation theory I was thrown by multiple practitioners.

Here’s the deal. Take the blue pill, and you can close this blog and continue on with your life and shins the way they are. Take the red pill, and I’ll show you the real reasons your shin splints aren’t improving with rest, ice, anti-inflammatories and those orthotics.

1.      Your looking down the wrong Rabbit Hole

When you look down the rabbit hole. All you see is a pair of bright blue orthotics giving medial arch support. You switch them between shoes, work shoes, running shoes, golf shoes, tennis shoes, dancing shoes. After a while they become part of you. You believe you can’t sleep without them. I’m going to annoy a lot of people when I say this, but I believe orthotics are just an easy road the practitioner takes to fix a more complicated issue and a money making exercise.

2.      You’re not putting in the Time & Money to get the problem fixed.

Sometimes I’m fascinated that individuals will go a spend $2000 on getting their triumph serviced and fixed because they don’t want any issues getting to and from work. Yet tell people, they need to spend a few hundred to get their foot, ankle and leg fixed, so they can run and be active without pain and they hesitate.

I’ve seen 1000’s of clients over the years. I’m yet to see anyone who hasn’t improved if they put the work in, and listen to our instructions.

See a practitioner regularly early, follow their advice, don’t try and spread appointments out until they say so. Otherwise you’re delaying the rehabilitation and you’ll end up spending more in the long run.

3.      You believe the Over pronation hype

You use to have cool shoes to run in. Now you run in a shoe that looks like a toned down version of the titanic. It's black or white, and sometimes when you put them on, your partner walks 5m behind you.

Let’s be honest here. Your feet don’t one day start over pronating. You didn’t go to sleep with medial arches in your midfoot and wake up the next morning with flat feet.

You need to start out by utilising a practitioner with specific skill sets like those at Evolutio to find out what is working well within the 26 bones, 33 joints and 19 muscles in your foot. Improve this first then work up the leg, to improve deficiencies and compensation that has occurred as a result.

Pronation is actually necessary when you run believe it or not. The action causes force transfer through the foot, ankle and lower leg.

So don’t have tunnel vision. Open your eyes to what else could be causing your shin splints. If you come to us with your orthotics. Be careful, we might throw them under a bus.

Here’s another interesting story. Shin splints in the Military is an extremely common occurrence, especially with new and young soldiers.

I can guarantee that you can’t pronate in a military boot. In fact you can’t usually feel your toes in one. So if this is the case, wouldn’t it be more realistic that suddenly constantly pack marching, running, jumping and patrolling in a boot that weighs more than 3-4 x (when dry) a normal jogger would cause massive strain on weak and under developed lower leg muscle groups, therefore causing a version of bone stress? Rather than over pronation?

4.      You’re not seeing us at Evolutio

Enough said. We’re a friendly crew. Drop us an email at [email protected], or swing by our clinics in South Yarra or Kew and say gday. Soon we will be moving to our own facility in Richmond as we continue to grow.

 “Sooner or later you’re going to realise just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” – 

One of the dudes from the Matrix.

Alex Drew is a Physiotherapist and Founder of Evolutio which is now located at  South Yarra in addition to Kew, Melbourne.

Evolutio specialises in Physiotherapy and Podiatry treatment  for high level Sporting athletes, CrossFit athletes, Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters. 

Evolutio will soon move to a new premises in Richmond, where it aims to take over the Sports Medicine market in Melbourne.

[evolutiosportsphysioblog]

4 Ways to Create Invincible Tendons for Improving your Athletic Performance

Many of you will have heard of the terms tendinitis or tendinopathy…some of you will have even had the misfortune of experiencing the disruptions it can cause to your training or worse, to day-to-day activities!

Lets be honest, this condition hangs around like a bad smell! The inconsistency in its presentation can drive you insane…it doesn’t take much to flare it up, but on any given day, it could feel like its miraculously disappeared, giving you false hope that you’ve recovered, only for it to come back with a vengeance.

Tendon Injuries are the most common type of Injury we see here at our Physio clinics in South Yarra, Kew and Hawthorn in Melbourne which are primarily constructed to house high level strength & conditioning athletes, CrossFit athletes, Powerlifters and olympic weightlifters.

 First things first… What is a tendon and how do they get injured?

 Tendons are tough bands of fibrous connective tissue that usually connect muscles to bones. They are known to withstand tension/load and depending on where they are in the body, can have the function of acting as a spring to help generate force and help with efficiency in movement.

 Common places to have a tendon injury are:

·       Achilles

·       Elbows

·       Knees

·       Hips

  Essentially tendon injuries occur when an increase in load or volume exceeds the tendon’s capacity. These can be caused by both intrinsic factors (i.e. poor biomechanics, decreased strength etc.) and extrinsic factors (i.e. changes to training volume, surfaces or environment).

 It has also been proposed that the model of tendon injury is a continuum. This is why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept to treatment. Identifying where you are on this continuum determines how your tendon injury should be managed.

  A typical tendinopathy sufferer may experience stiffness and pain at the start of training, then often “warms up” to less pain….but then some acheyness follows after cooling down….(does this sound like you?! Keep reading….)

Essentially, each time you rest, your tendon capacity lowers/gets weak (there is no stimulus for protein production and no maintenance of the muscle tendon unit)

So when the pain goes away, and you resume training at the load you left off at, the ability of the tendon to cope is now even lower…thus pushing you further down the continuum of tendon change

 So what does this all mean? What can I do to break the cycle?

 First of all, lets be clear on one thing. Tendons actually like load. The key to whether you “make or break” is about managing the right type and volume of load and allowing time for your tissue to adapt. 

   4 Ways to Create Invincible Tendons for Improving your Athletic Performance

 1. Reduce Pain and Swelling Levels

The Physios here at Evolutio who work primarily with CrossFit, Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters are great at helping with this, be it with our hands on work and/or advice on how to modify your current levels of activity (which doesn’t mean stop everything!)

This is not just to make you feel more comfortable, but it is to allow you to start/continue with a specific rehab program to increase your tendon capacity. Sometimes the use of anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen (the best non steroidal anti inflammatory that is most effective on tendon pain) is necessary. **

 2. Get Strong!

Yes! Load up! …. But in small increments over time and with the right type of exercises.

 Eccentric only programs were all the rage at one point in tendon management, but just like a popped collars and crocs, we don’t think it’s all that cool anymore.  Think about it this way, if we are trying to increase the capacity of a tendon to be able to cope with the loads that it is subjected to in physical activity that involve functional movements and multi-jointed exercises, why would we only work it in one way? This does not replicate real life, therefore will lack some carryover! Concentric and Eccentric is therefore a no brainer!

 Maintenance of general strength of the rest of the kinetic chain is also super important! For instance, don’t let your quads and glutes get weak just because it’s attached to the Achilles that’s sore!  

 3. Vary your Loads

 This concept is not new in the fitness industry when it comes to building strength and getting results. So why not apply it to our rehab. If we know that a tendon injury is due to overuse from repetitive loading then why would we prescribe something that is also high in load and volume (the ol’ 3 x 15 !!!) Instead we take these into consideration-

o   Tendons have a delayed response to load (at least 24-48hours), hence the morning after pain

o   We need to manage any load inducing pain within a rehab program in order to allow continuation of the program

o   Every individual has a different baseline

o   Rehab does not just stop when pain goes away

 A good rehab program for tendons should include high load, medium load and low load days and continually change to push the tendon’s capacity up. A program that is too low in load is just as detrimental as one that is too high in load! Tricky!

 4. Advanced Work

Once there is base strength and a reduction in pain, we need to bring in speed and power. Acceleration/deceleration, tempo with lifting, sports specific drills etc 

 SO….What are the take home messages?!

 ·       Load is what can “make or break” a tendon- get it right!

·       A rehab program which gets you to do the same things every single day is not likely to get you the results you want when it comes to tendon rehab

·       Complete rest may not necessarily be the best approach

·       Good things take time, so does tissue adaptation. Be patient!

·       An individualised program like the ones that the Evolutio Physiotherapists can create, are crucial in Rehabilitation. We are the only ones creating Strengthening Programs using the Conjugate system in Australia

Jac is our newest addition to the team, coming from an experienced background in Physio over many years working in London and Melbourne through private practice. She has a wicked eye for Analyzing Movement and Biomechanics. Jac Currently interns as a CrossFit Trainer and works out of our South Yarra clinic at GW Performance on Mondays and Thursdays, Kew and Hawthorn Clinics Tuesday/Thursday. Bookings with Jac can be made here