Read about the Great Benefits of Pilates & Core/Posture Control Exercises

By Katie Harders – Pilates Instructor & Remedial Massage Therapist

Ever wanted to know how Pilates can help you? Sore lower back, poor posture from various everyday activities, pelvic in stability, muscular imbalances and lack of body awareness are just a few issues that Pilates can help improve.

Here are 9 reasons why you should try a Pilates or Physio Pilates/Exercise Session:

1.Reduce Pain! This one is simple

2. Improve muscle tone: help strengthen and tone muscles. The more muscle you add to your body the more you stimulate your metabolism, which helps decrease body fat by burning calories and fat.

2. Improves flexibility: Pilates uses stretching movements to help keep your muscles supple and flexible. With increased flexibility you can do more of your favourite activities.

3. Energizing: Pilates teaches you to use your breath to perform the exercise, so breathing more deeply can help stimulate our body’s response system. This energy carries throughout the day, so doing Pilates in the morning is best.

4. Improves posture: Pilates can help you stand taller and more confidently. Through Pilates corrective exercise you can improve your posture by conscious movements that help to correct imbalances in the body that cause bad posture and tension.

5. Improves Balance: Balance comes from the ‘core ‘ or centre of the body so Pilates will strengthen this area and begin to bring the body back into a more balanced upright stance.

6. Sleep Better: Doing Pilates in the morning helps release cortisol, a stress hormone that builds up in our body. Exercise helps release some of this hormone which if done early in the day helps you to concentrate better at work, and be relaxed by night time resulting in better sleep.

7. Decreased Back and Joint aches: Pilates train the body so that all of the core muscles work together to support and stabilize the back. Part of developing effective core strength is to train the body to know when to release as well as activate the core muscles. Pilates movements are low impact on the back and joints.

8. Improve Pelvic Floor Awareness and Activation: Pilates teaches you correct activation of the pelvic floor muscles. All exercises are done while activating pelvic floor throughout the whole class.

Pilates & Exercise classes are available at Gold Coast Physio & Sports Health, simply call us to make your next appointment 07 5500-6470

By Sports Physio, Greg Wootton

Groin pain is commonly reported by young sports participants, particularly young males that play kicking sports.

What are the Signs and Symptoms of Footballers Groin?

An athlete with Footballers Groin will typically report pain, tightness and tenderness in the inner thigh; and central tenderness and pain local to the pubic symphysis (this is the bony joint low down in the middle of your abdomen, just above our genitals)

Some report a deep ache in the genital area and the lower abdomen. Symptoms are usually associated with the kicking, jumping, sprinting and twisting activities of some sports and these stop/start, change of direction or single leg activities will cause aggravation. If the pain becomes worse, it may even be present just to walk around.

So what IS Footballers Groin?

Pain in the Groin region may be due to a multitude of conditions including hip joint pathologies, bursitis (irritation of the sack of fluid that usually sit below a tendon and stops the tendon rubbing directly on the bone) of the psoas muscle (one of the hip flexor muscels), stress fractures in the pelvis or hip, avulsion fracture (a bone fracture where the muscle contracts so strongly that it fractures off a portion of bone) , nerve compression and low back pathologies. These conditions all make diagnosis of the reason for Groin Pain very complex.
The term “Footballers Groin” was coined to refer to multiple conditions of the pelvis and lower limb that regularly affect sportspeople participating in sports involving a kicking action. The diagnosis includes a combination of osteitis pubis (discussed below), adductor tendonopathy (damage to the adductor, or groin muscles as they attach in to the pelvis bone) and a sports hernia.

Some individuals may also have abdominal muscle pathology where these muscles insert into bone around the pubic symphysis (and a section of abdominal tendon called the conjoined tendon).
Osteitis pubis involves inflammation/irritation of the pubic symphysis , the joint at the front of the pelvis between the two pubic bones. As the inflammation and irritation continues bone marrow oedema  (bone stress) and bony degenerative change occurs.
Adductor insertional tendonopathy is micro and macro trauma of the tendon associated with activity, resulting in structural changes in the tendon, similar to a variety of overuse type tendonopathies such as tennis elbow or the Achilles.

The term “sports hernia” refers to a deficiency of the wall of the inguinal canal, although unlike other many other hernias, it typically does not have a palpable lump or protrusion.

The irritation in Footballers Groin is thought to be a product of shear forces on the pubic bones of the symphysis pubis joint due to weight bearing on a single limb. These forces are then multiplied with kicking, jumping or changes of direction whilst under load. If these forces cannot be adequately controlled the movement at the symhysis pubis irritates and degenerates the bony surfaces. In an attempt to control the shear forces the athlete may overload the adductor and abdominal muscles.

What is the Cause?

A lack of the muscle control and stabilisation of the pelvis is considered the primary cause of Footballers Groin.

Specifically, poor functioning of the gluteal and deep pelvic muscles responsible for stabilising the pelvis and reducing shear forces through the pelvis. A direct link has been shown between decreased function of the gluteus medius and subsequent over activity of the adductor longus muscle.

Decreased hip joint mobility has also been shown to increase loading on the pelvic structures.

What does Treatment Involve?

A myriad of factors must be considered in the treatment and rehabilitation of the “Footballers Groin”. Initially the reduction of aggravating activity to reduce inflammation and degenerative changes may reduce symptoms, but if muscle control of the pelvis and lower limbs is not corrected it is likely symptoms will return with a return to activity.

Exercises to improve dynamic (movement) stabilisation of the pelvis should be commenced and  gradually the loads and dynamic components of the exercises increased. The exercises are then advanced to include sport specific training in preparation for a return to the field.

All the Physio’s at GCPSH are able to help Manage you, or your child, if experiencing Groin Pain. In particular, Sports Physio Greg Wootton worked with a WA AFL football team for many years so has extensive experience in treating difficult groin pain and is happy to help any client at any level of competition.

Have you had on-going hip pain or hip surgery?  Has your mother or father had a hip replacement at an early age? Worried about getting early hip arthritis? If so, this information will be useful to you.

Did you know we can test your hip muscle strength using a hand-held electronic dynamometer to indicate which muscles need strengthening to help reduce your pain, rehabilitated you from surgery or reduce your risk of recurrence of hip pain or injury.

A hand-held dynamometer is an electronic device held on your skin while you resist a movement. It gives a read-out of force output that can be interpreted by your physio or exercise physiologist.

The force values for one limb can be compared to the other limb and thanks to a number of more recent research studies, we now have an idea of what “normal” strength ratios should be between muscle groups. Notably we have this information for uninjured hips, swimmers and baseballers shoulders.

A recent study by an Australian-based physio (Kemp et al, 2013) has found this dynamometer testing to have good inter-therapist reliability, that-is, if one of our physio’s were to test you one day, another therapist could test you the next day with the same results.

This means you can be sure that any testing we perform on you in the clinic will provide useful information in helping guide your management- whether that be following surgery,  if you are experiencing on-going pain or even if you are worried about following in the footsteps of a parent that may have had an early-age joint replacement.

Next time you visit us, make sure you ask your Physio whether dynamometry strength testing may be useful to you.