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Practitioner: Carlie-Ann Offer

Rehabilitation, Exercise Prescription and Core Stability

After any kind of injury the body compensates in order to keep functioning in the way that the individual demands and this can cause problems. All sorts of changes occur with an injury including muscle guarding and hence weakness, compensatory movements and postures to minimise discomfort and detraining, where the learnt movements of any sport are altered and the muscles become de-conditioned.

Re-injury is a typical occurrence because the individual either does not recover properly, maintains the readapted movement patterns and postures or tries to use sport to get fit rather than get fit for their particular sport. This is where rehabilitation is important. To get back to full fitness you needs to relearn proper use of the body's joints and muscles both in the arms and legs but also, even more importantly, in the torso. Core Stability is a term that many know about but few know of its very specific importance in maintaining healthy physical function and injury prevention/avoidance.

But it does not have to be just people injured through sport that need rehab like this. Poor postural habits at work and at home lead to over strain of muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments and these lead to pain especially in the low back, between the shoulder blades and in the neck and head.

At our clinic we suggest to most patients that, during the course of their treatment, they have their core musculature assessed. Generally they are found to have weakness somewhere that can be one of the causes of their presenting problem. Sessions are then centred around re-education of core musculature and postural awareness to reduce strain on tissues and joints and thus ease discomfort due to everyday life. This is done in our rehabilitation and fitness gym on site.