MAD Physiotherapy Blog

With Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra in extended lockdowns, I thought I would put together some lessons that we have picked up over the last 18 months on attempting to maintain a high level of training with restrictions in place. The first and most important thing to...

In the last article I discussed what I saw were the drivers to success at the highest levels of sport. I did so at the individual level, discussing the traits and behaviours that were obvious to me. In this discussion I will try to identify what I have observed to...

As discussed in the last few blogs I was in the fortunate position to be able to stay in Tokyo for the entirety of the athletics program. Further to this I was in Narita, about 75 minutes out of Tokyo prior to the games with Australian athletes who came into Japan...

I know that this article is going to be the hardest to write. It is the sobering article that comes after some reflection on the performances of my athletes and my own coaching behaviours. High performance sport is just that, about achieving performance. The reality...

Sitting in quarantine, I am slowly getting back to some normalcy outside of the Olympic bubble. This has meant the process of reaching out to friends and colleagues to return messages of support and reflect on the journey. One of the most common questions you have...

No matter what anyone says the Olympics and the World Cup are the two biggest events on the global calendar. Nothing even comes close. They bring nations and the world together in a way that nothing else can. So in the lead up to these games, with Covid looming over...

As I sit here on the wet and humid last day of the Tokyo Olympics, there is a sense of melancholy. I have heard it described before but was not sure what people were talking about when they mentioned the significant feeling of despair that comes over you when you...

It is reasonably well understood that diet and the associated nutritional content of our diets has a significant influence on health outcomes. Eating healthy has been associated with improvements in cardiovascular health, immune function, metabolic disease (such as...

The data continues to get worse for the manual therapy denialists. Look its a small study from a Japanese team, and I am definitely extrapolating a lot here, but it appears that basic myofascial release (treatment to the muscular and connective tissue elements)...

In our recent blog on sleep and performance we outlined the benefits and detriments of sleep and the lack thereof. We spoke about the definition of sleep loss, that is two successive nights of <7 hours sleep, and how many athletes in particular do not get enough...