Gymnastics Injury Rehabilitation

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A gymasts recovery needs to be an all day event, every day.  What you do outside of the clinic becomes increasingly more important in the later stages of rehab.

It's ideal to return to gym knowing that your even stronger than you were prior to injury.  To achieve this we need to optimize healing, regain your previous level of functional capacity, then surpass it.

In additon to physical rehab, biomechanical breakdowns, movement analysis, functonal strength training are important parts of every gymnasts recovery plan.

Repetive Stress Injuries (RSI's)

Matt's patient Joselyn Goings (Desert Lights Gymnastics)

As the season peaks, we find gymnasts with repetitive stress injuries (RSI’s), that could have been resolved earlier in the season.

There is nothing sadder than losing an opportunity to a chronic injury that could have been squashed months ago.

For gymnasts, we need to knock out small problems before they become chronic RSI's.

My 12 Most Common RSI's That Hurt Gymnasts The Most Are:

  1. Conracted Hip Flexors

  2. Patellar Tendonitis

  3. Osgood Schlatter's

  4. Repetitive Lumbar Impact Syndrome

  5. Stress Fractures

  6. Residual Effects from Upper Neck Injury

  7. Avulsion of Hamstring Origin

  8. Shinsplints

  9. Sever's (calcaneal apophysitis)

  10. IT Band Syndrome

  11. Repetive Wrist Injury

  12. Scapular Instability

Post-Surgical Rehab

The keys to a great rehab and conficent return to gym are

  1. Set Aggresive Goals, allowing our athlete attack their rehab, knowing that making an impressive comeback is reward.

  2. Home Rehab Rules, since the hours you spend outside of therapy add up to a lot more than the time we spend in therapy. You can rehab anytime of the day. Matt often focuses on showing you how to be your own therapist, outside the clinic, improving your overall recovery.

  3. Always Leave Stronger than you were prior to injury.