Our understanding of knee arthritis has changed significantly over the last 10 years with greater research on knee cartilage as well as the process of arthritis. Knee arthritis remains one of the most common diagnoses we see in our Boulder Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics. We have moved away from the old “wear...
Quadriceps strains are a common sports injury occurring in activities demanding kicking, cutting, sprinting, and deceleration movements. In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice, athletes participating in soccer, football, and rugby report higher incidence of this injury vs. other athletes. Injured athletes can expect to miss practice and competition time equivalent to the degree of muscle...
Hamstring injuries are one of the most common injuries in both individual and team sports. In sports such as soccer and football these injuries involve a traumatic pull of the muscle while sprinting or accelerating. After the initial healing phase athletes must rehabilitate the injury with Physical Therapy exercises to regain optimal muscle function and...
Risk reduction programs in sports have been shown effectively reduce sports injury. In particular, the research on knee injuries, including ACL, in soccer have shown dramatic reductions in injury rates. These programs, often designed and implemented by Physical Therapists, include exercises designed to improve an athlete’s strength, balance, coordination, and agility. Research shows these programs...
Ankle sprains are one of the most common sports injuries we encounter in our Boulder Physical Therapy practice. In our previous blogs we have written on the importance of early interventions such as manual therapy and proprioceptive exercise to help accelerate the recovery after these sprains. Prior research has shown a higher recurrence rate in athletes...
When we began playing sports, our pre game routines consisted of a cardiovascular warm up, some agility work, followed by static stretching (sustained holds >15 seconds of the muscles). This type of stretching has fallen out of favor in the last decade because of the negative impact of static stretching on muscle performance. Research has...