We all know injuries are bad news in all sports, but in football an injury can have particularly far-reaching effects which is why surveillance and screening programmes are essential. Not only does an injury have an adverse affect on the player, causing a range of emotional responses that can then unmask other more serious mental health issues (see the ‘Related content’ box) but just as importantly, if the athlete is a team player which footballers obviously are, the consequences can and do escalate to affect the whole team and, even worse, its performance (1). Our job as physical therapists is to do our utmost to ensure injuries don’t happen on our watch and one of the most powerful tools we have in our armoury for achieving this is injury screening and injury surveillance. This article reviews the evidence supporting the importance of surveillance and screening programmes in football, outlines some of the evidence-based screening tests, and offers some practical steps on constructing a programme, as well as enhancing or developing an existing one. And if you have ‘seniors’ who don’t yet appreciate the significance of this area of medical care, we will also arm you with some excellent research to help you support and justify the need to implement a surveillance and screening programme for your team.
Working in a multidisciplinary team can be frustrating and difficult at times. Creating a team requires a clear strategy with objectives and boundaries and good communication. To ensure a functioning and useful team, members must... Read More
Our regular research reviewer, physical therapist Joseph Brence, reviews research looking into the benefit of grading low back pain using the ‘subgroups for targeted treatment’ (STarT) back screening tool from Keele University.
Our regular research reviewer, physical therapist Joseph Brence, reviews research looking into evidence that suggests that the placebo effect can be useful in treating chronic pain conditions.
Our regular research reviewer, physical therapist Joseph Brence, reviews research looking into how good communication skills and a careful subjective examination of the patient are at the base of creating the therapeutic alliance and caring for the patient.
Catch up on this quarter's essential massage therapy research. Our Massage Therapy Journal Watch brings you all the most important journal discoveries with our own unique Co-Kinetic take-home messages. This is one of our most popular sections of content aimed at saving you time and money not having to trawl the research journals!
Catch up on this quarter's essential physical therapy research. Our Physical Therapy Journal Watch brings you all the most important journal discoveries with our own unique Co-Kinetic take-home messages. This is one of our most popular sections of content aimed at saving you time and money not having to trawl the research journals!
In line with our goal of saving you both time and money, here’s our pick of some of the best resources on social media published over the last couple of months.
If biotensegrity or the 'biology of tensegrity' is everything that some of our thought-leaders in anatomy believe, it has the potential to change the way we deliver many physical and massage therapies. Biotensegrity has been defined as the new "science of body architecture" and includes the latest research into the fascia. Biotensegrity, or tensegrity in biology, is described as the tensional network of the human form. Biotensegrity is an emerging field that raises new questions and insights into how this fascial connective tissue matrix is tensioned and how crucial that is to human structure.
The objective of this article along with our Co-Kinetic module on biotensegrity is to help you as a therapist understand how to integrate biotensegrity principles into physical activity programmes and massage therapies. If we can achieve this, all signs point towards a recipe for fewer injuries, better rehabilitation, improved natural function in motion, greater happiness and by virtue of all the above, greater success as a therapist. I am sure that most of us will agree that when we, or our clients, move injury-free everyone is at their happiest. Pain and injury bring misery.
Can tensegrity, or more specifically biotensegrity (defined as ‘tensegrity in living structures’), explain the interconnectedness of body structure? More importantly, will an understanding of biotensegrity change the way in which you work as a massage therapist? At this moment in our evolutionary history, it seems very likely it can and will, which is why the concept of tensegrity and biotensegrity has become an international hot topic and has provoked much discussion among a wide range of scientists and therapists. Simply defined biotensegrity provides a scientific (and plausible) explanation for something that we as therapists instinctively already know, that every structure in the body is in some way interconnected in a way in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This article (along with its associated links to a series of animations) documents a fascinating insight into the ongoing debate between two leaders in their fields of research into the organisation of body structure and gives the reader the opportunity to understand the relevant concepts and compare the different points of view. It looks very much like this is the next step in our journey of discovery of functional anatomy.
This article discusses whether tensegrity or more specifically biotensegrity, which is explained as "tensegrity in biology" is changing our understanding of anatomy. The article is part of a special series published to coincide with the Biotensegrity Pre-Conference day which preceded the British Fascia Symposium 2016. It is part of a module of articles which can be found at the following link: Biotensegrity: concepts and practical applications for the manual therapist. Other articles in this series include: ‘Biotensegrity Part 1: Introduction to biotensegrity’; ‘Biotensegrity Part 2: Considering the role of fascia in the science of body architecture’; ‘Biotensegrity Part 3: Levers and pendulums’; ‘Dissecting the anatomy experience: a valuable learning tool’; ‘Function, form and fascia: What lies beneath?’; and ‘A new anatomy for the 21st century’.
The goal of our new Business Development for Physical Therapists category, which we’ve called the LEAN Therapist, is to give you advice and resources to help you start or build your own business or self employed career. Through this business development section which is written specifically for physical therapists and massage therapists, we’ll give you practical tools to help you build and run an efficient and effective business, guided by the principle of "less is more", informed by structured analysis of data, and wherever possible automated.
This article is the fifth in a series from our Manual Therapy Student Handbook (see the class 'Contents panel’ for further details) and it describes how to assess and treat common hip complaints. As well as listing a comprehensive assessment procedure, the treatments are described in full and have accompanying videos, which provides a great practical resource for the clinician.
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