Upon meeting, expect an assessment of your presenting condition, this will involve answering some questions, including a brief discussion on your goals and how we can best work together to achieve them. I will then ask you to perform some movements that will help us identify what structures may be contributing to the reason for your visit.
Depending on your presentation, you can expect a variety of hands-on techniques that focus on improving muscle tissue length, tightness, or soreness, increasing joint mobility, aiding metabolisation of the body’s by-products and enhancing blood circulation.
This can be achieved utilising a variety of techniques and tools such as:
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Massage
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Trigger Point Therapy
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Myofascial Release Techniques
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Joint Mobilisation
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Muscle Energy Techniques
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Cupping
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Scraping
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Dry needling
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Heat therapy and more
The best part about my job as a manual therapist is learning and educating you about why we may employ a certain tool or technique and how it may help with your symptoms and achieve your goals. Depending on where you are on your journey, you can certainly expect some strengthening exercises to compliment the hands-on work.
Now that we have assessed and found what strength imbalances you may have and alleviated some pain, it is time to get you strong to prevent the reoccurrence of pain. This may include some pain education, as well as a short lesson on the nervous system and how it can affect our function and ability to heal.
In terms of exercise prescription, depending on your interests, goals, and preference I will tailor a personalised rehab, strength or stretching/mobilising program.
If you enjoy the gym and strength work, it will be focused on activations, cues and maybe cleaning up movement patterns. You will be sent a tailored program via Physitrack directly to your smartphone or we can work one on one to ensure you are doing things correctly with an extra push. The same goes with if you enjoy reformer Pilates or yoga.
Quite often we can skip the core principles of Pilates and challenging yoga postures and we can inadvertently make a fantastic exercise a potentially painful one. I am happy to assess you on the in-house Pilates reformer and gym/functional trainer. This is the most important part of your journey to moving better, enjoying life with minimal pain, and knowing when it strikes what you can do to help yourself.
