This week a semi-pro cyclist started work with us to cure a long-standing back injury that has caused him to pull out of a recent national championship road race…

Dave rides for ‘Team Frezza-Pasta Montegrappa’ in the Premier calender, which is a national road race series with race distances in the order of ~100 miles. He’s one of 4 British riders in the 6-man team (4 Brits, 1 Swede, 1 South African) and they race all over the UK, with a handful of competitions internationally too.

Although Dave’s a pretty modest fellow, it’s fairly clear by some of his anecdotes that he’s not half bad at his sport, and when he occasionally dropped his guard I heard him mention winning some big races in France and coming 3rd in a recent U6 tour in Sweden (which is a 6-day 6-700km race).

Unfortunately, due to his constant back pain, Dave was forced to abandon his national championship road race event in June. His next key event is the national time trial championship in Wales in September, and the worry of not being ready for that was what has caused him to come and see us to get it fixed once and for all. He’s already seen a bunch of physios and has had a good period of rest – but with no solution thus far.

“I’m really pleased that you guys so quickly found what we believe to be the problem. The main thing for me is that the explanation makes absolute sense in the context of what I already know, so that’s really reassuring.” said Dave, “I’m looking forward to fixing it, and improving my endurance and efficiency. If you’re telling me I’m able to apply more power too then that’ll be a bonus.”

It sounds like our team have figured out what’s happening and have set a comprehensive rehab programme to help prepare him for September’s big race – so it’ll be great to see him progress!

Last night, members of Comberton Tennis Club’s ladies 1st team booked a session with us in order to learn more about dynamic warm up and injury prevention for tennis…

Comberton is a [relatively] new town just outside of Cambridge, and so Comberton Tennis Club is a [relatively] new club; when one of their first team got in touch to book a session with us, we were delighted.

They asked us to talk about warming up and about injury prevention – both topics that are high on our hot list – so we put together a session that encompassed a whistle-stop tour of dynamic warm up, core stability, injury prevention, movement patterns and agility… …plus a wrap-up of how those concepts all come together to impact upon the players career longevity and performance levels.

“We thoroughly enjoyed this session, it was very very useful,” said Tamryn, who organised the session for the ladies, “We hadn’t been aware of how our movement patterns will affect us on court and how they transfer into tennis. To be honest, just from a general body awareness perspective it was valuable – we can improve our well being considerably by doing more of this type of stuff; If we had better core stability etc. then our limbs would’nt be hurting us.”

“We’re a relatively new team looking to step it up and compete at a higher level – so we’ll be up against a higher level of competitor. This is going to be a great start to get us thinking about what we can and should be doing to stay keep ourselves injury free and performing well.”

A dancer from the international ‘Mamma Mia!’ stageshow tour has started work with us to fix a knee injury he picked up on stage. When you see the photo of the type of work the show involves, you’ll understand why that might be possible..!

Steve, a full-time dancer who has also appeared in productions of ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Cats’, has come to our injury clinic to help treat and rehabilitate his knee injury. The tour has already taken him to Germany and Switzerland, and he needs to be back in action ASAP to continue the tour into Belgrade, Cork, Sweden, Norway and then back to the UK in Cardiff.

The show involves some pretty physical routines (as you’ll see from the example photo), so full rehabilitation into movement patterns will be critical. Steve’s no stranger to this type of work though – previous shows has seen him performing on Olympic rings suspended from a crane above the audience.

The show would like Steve back on stage in a couple of weeks so the race to full function is on!

This week a national level tennis player has started working with us to resolve a lingering abdominal pain that’s been hampering her matches this past season.

Laura, who has been County champion at every age group from under-10 to seniors, developed a mysterious abdominal pain during a key tournament (in which she beat the world #452 ranked player) and has spent the last 9 months trying to find a cure…

Laura has been a tennis champion since she was a young girl, has been involved in various U14 and U18 international tournaments and even made it into the final qualifiers of a key pre-Wimbledon tournament only to be beaten by the winner of the French Open.

Having graduated up in the seniors, she injured herself at the $50K tournament in Barnstaple in October of last year. This abdominal injury has meant that she’s been unable to string a decent match together (or even serve on some occasions) since, which is obviously a massive impact on a player of that calibre.

She’s been to various consultants and physio to try and fix the problem and has even been told to “stop playing tennis for a year.”

The good news is that we think we have a good idea what it is, what’s causing it and how it can be fixed. The other good news is that, if we’re right, it’ll be significantly less than a year(!) and she should even see some performance improvements to boot!

So – with a bit of luck, we’ll be able to help her string a series of matches together and she’ll be able to fulfill her potential!

As ever, we’ll keep you updated…

Last night Core Cambridge therapists Matt and “Continental” Tony delivered a two-hour talk covering common sporting injuries to the Cambridge branch of the British Red Cross.

The talk, which was well attended, covered many of the common injuries that occur during sports. For each injury, we talked through the pathology and etiology (ie. what the injury is and what causes it) as well as information such as who’s most susceptible, injury grading and acute treatment strategies (such as icing).

As well as the really common injuries such as hamstring strain, ankle inversion and A/C (shoulder) joint issues we also covered some less common occurrences such as neck injuries, heart issues and dehydration.

Anton King, leader of the cambridge group of the Red Cross, said “Core Cambridge’s talk was spot on! It gave us a really useful insight into sporting injuries. The ankle issues were particularly useful because they’re extremely common at public events – and the explanation of the icing protocol was valuable too.”

Last night two members of our therapy team (Matt and “Continental” Tony) gave a talk to the Cambridge University First Aid Society, which is a division of St John Ambulance.

The talk was about “pitchside first aid”, a term which describes the process of assessing, treating (if appropriate), advising and appropriate referral for injuries that occur on a pitch during a sports match.

“It was a great session!” said Jenny Molloy of CUFACS, “Very informative and thorough; Our members found it to be really interesting. It went into a lot more detail than we were expecting and we’ll certainly feel more confident in recommending what the patient should do once they leave our care.”