Muscles and tendons

Girls and women are much more at risk of serious knee injuries than their male counterparts But research has shown that strength training has an astonishingly protective effect. Owen Anderson describes the curious vulnerability of the female knee.It’s sad but true: female athletes who take part in sports involving jumping and ‘cutting’ (football, basketball, volleyball, […]

Why detecting muscle imbalance is an essential part of an injury-prevention strategy The following is an attempt to summarise some of the material presented by us at a conference. The presentation had a significant practical component and Chris elegantly demonstrated his approach to practical muscle balance assessment. The written word is a poor substitute for […]

You may think that swimmers never get hurt. If so, read on Swimming is regarded as the ideal form of exercise because it is so injury-free. Physical problems only really emerge as a result of competitive training, combined with heavy land training. The result? Over-use or repetitive microtrauma injuries such as swimmer’s shoulder and breast-stroke […]

Plantar fasciitis is the inflammation of the fascia on the bottom of the foot- but how do you get rid of it? Cases of plantar fasciitis can linger for months at a time, with pain increasing and decreasing in an unpredictable pattern. Often, plantar fasciitis discomfort may nearly disappear for several weeks, only to re-emerge […]

Detection of muscle injury in sport Avoiding injury is crucial for success in sport. The problem is that most athletes only become aware of an injury once it has become major and performance hindering. Any test therefore that could flag early injuries before they become serious or chronic enough to sideline an athlete could be […]

What are the best ways to cope with sports pain? And how do different people react to the same injury? Pain and gain – how athletes can manage and overcome pain? ‘Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.’ So goes a well-known but anonymous quote. For many athletes, pain is a normal everyday experience and […]

Looking at the causes of lateral knee pain and ITBS There are numerous complaints affecting the knee, but in this article I have focused on lateral knee pain, having treated a number of people with this problem in recent weeks. In cases of chronic lateral knee pain, iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS) should be considered as […]

Knee instability has more to do with work than sport Instability of the knee joint – experienced as a sense of the knee ‘giving way’ – is an important symptom of knee injury and a predisposing factor for both acute knee injuries and osteoarthritis. Despite its importance, however, not much is known about the prevalence […]

Female adolescent and young adult athletes are known to be at much greater risk of knee injury – particularly anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears – than males of similar training level. And now a new UK study has suggested that these differences are due to puberty-induced changes in knee mechanics.  The study was set up […]

Knee injuries are the curse of many athletes, especially runners For instance, about 60 per cent of all runners are injured in an average year, and about one-third of those misfortunes occur at the knee, producing a yearly knee malady rate of one in five runners (‘Running Injuries to the Knee,’ Journal of the American […]