MAD Physiotherapy Blog
Sleep and Athletic Performance. Are you getting enough? And what to do if your sleep is poor.
Understanding, discussion and monitoring of sleep for performance has increased significantly in performance circles. It may appear to be a minor factor in human existence, because obviously we all need to sleep, but what is becoming apparent is that the importance of...
Moving from one injury to the next? How you can break the injury cycle.
Being injured sucks. But having a chain of injuries, one seemingly after the other, is even worse. Injuries are commonplace in sport, and recently a bright light is being shone on re-injury rates. For athletes, coaches and even the fans, nothing is more frustrating...
If you keep cramping in hot weather. Maybe you are drinking too much water!
With winter sports kicking off across the country over the last month, the changing and often unseasonable heat in parts of Australia is leading to an all too common headache for players, coaches and support staff. Cramping. It is an all too common sight. On a warmer...
Why speed training improves distance running performance.
It is well known that if you want to improve distance running you need to develop your aerobic capacity. As the distances community will always say, you want to get the km’s in the legs. What is less well known is that the faster you can run (your top speed over short...
Want to improve your 5/10km time? Don’t skip on the speed training.
A great recent study by Yamanaka et al, out of Japan shows that in elite 5km and 10km athletes, 100m and 400m performances was strongly correlated with seasons best times. What does this mean? It suggests that even within an elite population of accomplished distance...
Should I get a second opinion? In traumatic injuries it may be important.
Medical treatment for injuries seems as though it would be straightforward. You go to a health professional or the hospital, have it assessed, get any tests that are required, and start the treatment they recommend. Easy. But what happens when they tell you everything...
Train for performance not injury prevention.
At a sports injury conference recently renowned sports physiotherapist Rod Whiteley commented that coaches and athletes do not care about injury, they care about performance. Working with coaches and athletes on a daily basis you are reminded of this constantly. As a...
Why it is important to develop muscular strength in kids.
It is a question that is often asked of, ‘when should children or younger athlete’s start strength training?’ It is often associated with incorrect myths, such as strength training stunts growth or will reduce your flexibility. These myths are completely misguided and...
Sleep
A great paper was recently published looking at the sleep patterns of elite athletes in response to training and competition, Haines Roberts et al 2018. The systematic review identified that many athletes do not meet the recommendations for sleep time (>7 hours)...
Getting faster is easy. In theory – Part 2
In the first blog on sprinting we spoke about acceleration performance. In this blog we will look at maximal speed sprinting. This is your ability to run at your fastest speed possible. Luckily through the IAAF biomechanics research projects, we have some amazing data...