Dizziness and vertigo are symptoms of a concussion. But, they can also remain a problem long after a concussion is treated. Physical therapists who specialize in concussions can treat vertigo.

Many people experience dizziness and vertigo right after hitting their head hard enough to cause a concussion. In fact, apart from losing consciousness and nausea, dizziness and vertigo are often the first symptoms to show up right after the event. Like headaches, these symptoms can linger long after the initial head trauma and can even develop or worsen as the days go on if not treated.

Vertigo and dizziness can often resolve on their own. For many patients, however, they can become persistent and affect their everyday life. While the concussion is being treated, these symptoms will need special treatment.

What Is The Difference Between Vertigo And Dizziness?

Although often confused because of their similarities, vertigo and feeling dizzy are two completely different symptoms. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, dizziness is more like disorientation whereas vertigo is the feeling of spinning.

When you’re dizzy, you may feel lightheaded, woozy, or disoriented. If you feel like you or the room are spinning, you have vertigo. These feelings may make you lose your balance.

Vertigo, on the other hand, is the feeling of spinning either from inside your head or that the room is spinning around you. It can often precipitate the feeling of dizziness.

Vertigo and dizziness can be caused by different factors, but Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) is primarily caused by head trauma. BPPV is often the direct cause of persistent or recurring dizziness following a concussion. When your head hits something hard, the forces of the impact cause debris in the inner ear canal to break free. These pieces floating around cause vertigo and dizziness. The brain requires proper functioning of the ears to process information. However, when that information is inaccurate due to BPPV, it relies heavily upon the eyes to stabilize the head and regain balance. This can then cause vision problems as it leads to fatigue, leading to eyestrain and tension headaches.

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According to research, most athletes that experience head trauma show problems with the nerve signals in the brain related to BPPV. These symptoms can last up to and even occur within 30 days after the event.

If your vertigo and dizziness are the results of a blow to the head, physical therapy can be an effective form of treatment for both. Physical therapy not only relieves the symptoms of a concussion. It helps with eyestrain and headaches caused by vision problems associated with the concussion.

How Does Physical Therapy Treat Vertigo?

The treatment program your physical therapist develops for you will depend on the cause of your vertigo and your specific symptoms. Often, the treatment is about teaching you how to cope with the symptoms such as doing activities a different way to reduce the dizziness. This coping is just until your concussion symptoms subside completely, which can depend on a case by case basis.

A physical therapist can also give you exercises, usually focused on vision, to help treat vertigo. These exercises focus on improving your balance, correcting the differences between your inner ears, and improve your ability to focus your eyes and vision, according to the American Physical Therapy Association.

It can sometimes take a few sessions before a patient sees improvements in their symptoms. However, with exercises focusing on eye coordination and strengthening, the symptoms should subside over time. Such strengthening exercises include looking near and far and concentrating and following something that is moving.

These exercises can be done at home as well, which can often speed up recovery.

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You’re more than half-way through your marathon training and coming up on the point in your training when you’ll be tapering off. You’ve been putting in the miles for the last few months and your body is definitely started to feel it. Over the past few months, you’ve felt great, but lately, there’s been some nagging pain. You’re convinced you couldn’t possibly be injured since you followed your proper training program to a tee. Yet, as you tick off the miles every day, worry consumes your focus. The last thing you want is to work so hard only to drag yourself across the finish line, or worse, be sidelined on the day of the marathon. In this case, using the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill may be the best benefit you have to prevent an injury yet continue your training.

Usually used to rehabilitate an injury, the AlterG benefits anyone in a variety of ways. It provides a broad range of benefits to athletes as well as the elderly – from injury rehab to strength and conditioning.

Brief History Of The AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill

We experience every day the effects of gravity here on earth. It causes stress to our bones and muscles, whether we’re training for a marathon or simply carrying bags of groceries into our homes. It gives us our weight and our bodies feel the effect it every day. Yet, lack of gravity also affects the human body. This is why one biomechanics scientist approached NASA in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the possibility of new technology. It’s called Differential Air Press (DAP), and it’s the basis for the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill.

According to NASA, the technology, developed by Ames Research Center scientist Robert Whalen, had the purpose of preventing bone and muscle loss for astronauts in space. Still, it ending up being a solution for many problems we experience on earth due to gravity – i.e., helping relieve the stress and pressure of gravity.

“Whalen proposed using differential air pressure in space to mimic the Earth’s gravity to prevent bone loss and muscle deterioration,” according to NASA. “As a National Research Council post-doctoral Fellow at Ames from 1988 to 1989, Whalen helped develop effective exercise regimens for NASA’s astronauts…”

This was to prevent bone loss and muscle atrophy that often occur in the lower body due to the lack of gravity in space. For astronauts, the problem was that because the leg muscles weren’t being used in space, they were deteriorating and causing problems when they returned to earth. Their leg muscles were unable to effectively support their weight. Using the technology in space by adding the effects of gravity through air pressure, astronauts were able to exercise using their leg muscles.

A Solution For Space Is A Solution On Earth

You’ve probably heard about the many products developed from NASA technology. Memory foam, baby formula, the Dustbuster, LEDs, and even prosthetics were developed from NASA technology.

Originally, NASA developed the AlterG to add the effects of gravity in space for astronauts. Yet, the technology benefits us on Earth by taking away gravity; ergo, anti-gravity. Using a harness and a pressurized air chamber, the treadmill uniformly reduces the gravitational load and body weight according to set measurements. According to the AlterG website:

[It enables] patients and athletes to move unrestricted and pain-free – restoring and building muscle strength, range of motion, balance, function, and fitness. No other unweighting technology offers as much freedom, control, and versatility.

Yet, the treadmill has more uses than rehabilitating an injury.

The Benefits Of Running With No Gravity

Ever wondered what it’s like to run in space? Try using an anti-gravity treadmill. Of course, using the treadmill isn’t exactly not using any gravity. Unlike the special anti-gravity soda that Charlie drinks in Willy Wonka, you won’t be flying in a zero-gravity chamber. But, the effects are nonetheless the same.

Using a harness, the pressurized air then supports your lower body, seemingly lifting you according to set measurements. It’s not like you’ll be floating above the machine, as you’ll always remain in contact with the treadmill track. Yet, the air pressure that supports your body negates the effects of the stress from running with gravity. Even though we often use this treadmill in injury rehabilitation, it has other uses and a broad range of benefits.

• Training through an injury
• Correcting running technique even before fully correcting strength deficits
• Gait training
• Weight control and reduction
• Strength and conditioning for older patients
• Conditioning at reduced loads

OSR’s AlterG Open To The Public

The machine is extremely expensive for many physical therapy clinics. However, at OSR Physical Therapy, we believe that much of the training we use in injury rehabilitation can be and should be used in injury prevention. This is why we’ve extended the use of our AlterG treadmill to the public. You can access this service through either becoming a patient or through a monthly membership. It’s located at our Eden Prairie location. If you’re interested in using the AlterG as part of your training and injury prevention program, contact our Eden Prairie location for more information.

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Knee injuries are some the most common injuries for which athletes seek surgery. Yet, there are alternatives to surgery for some knee injuries, such as a torn meniscus. The answer? A new study found that physical therapy is just as good if not better than surgery.

Knee surgery among athletes for injuries is common. It’s so common, in fact, that the sports medical community has been looking for alternatives to cut down on costs as well as athlete downtime from the injury and surgery. Furthermore, they’ve been looking for ways to cut down on the number of athletes on opioids and pain medication due to surgery. It turns out that not all knee injuries, such as a torn meniscus, needs surgery.

In fact, a new study published recently shows that physical therapy may be better than surgery, or at very least just as effective.

Rehabilitation For A Torn Meniscus

According to the Mayo Clinic, a torn meniscus is one of the most common knee injuries for both competitive and recreational athletes. Any activity that requires twisting and rotating the knee can lead to a torn meniscus; and it’s not just relegated to athletes. Losing balance or slipping on a wet surface can result in a torn meniscus. Yet, the injury is most common among athletes that have to run and stop suddenly or quickly turn direction, such as in soccer, basketball, hockey, volleyball, and football.

Your knees have a cartilage that act like cushions between your bones and the joint. The c-shaped pieces of cartilage are the menisci and cushion your knee between the shinbone and thighbone. When you tear this cartilage, it causes pain, swelling and stiffness. It becomes difficult to put weight on your knee as well as extend your leg fully. A torn meniscus can block your knee from it’s full range of motion which greatly affects you function both during physical activity and in your daily life.

Surgery was often the solution for a torn meniscus if rest, ice, and medication didn’t solve it. Now, however, studies show that physical therapy is an alternative for most knee injuries. Furthermore, researchers found that physical therapy helped the knee return to normal functioning better than surgery if done correctly. The reason being that most people assume that surgery solves the problem right away without changing the factors that led to the tear.

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Lowering The Risk Of Knee Injuries

While surgery and physical therapy are both effective in treating a torn meniscus, it’s physical therapy that really focuses on lowering the risk. Many people assume that surgery is an end all, be all solution. Yet, it doesn’t address the factors that led up to the tear.

Granted, if you’re a basketball player that tore your meniscus while pivoting, you might not have been able to prevent this. However, there are ways to lower your risk of tearing it as well as creating conditions to recover quicker. Many times, knee injuries are the result of weak supporting muscles as well as improper technique.

Physical therapy identifies those weak muscles and sports physical therapy focuses on proper technique to prevent future injuries. Often your risk of knee injury increases with weak hips, glutes and core as well as poor knee mobility. Even if you’re an athlete, you may have weaknesses in your hips and glutes that are causing instability in your knees. With the added stress of pivoting and suddenly stopping in your sport, you increase your risk of tearing.

Physical therapy works to not only rehabilitate an injury but also prevent it from happening again. It does this by strengthening the supporting muscles around the knee as well as focusing on joint stability and mobility. The point of physical therapy isn’t just to return to normal if normal is what caused a higher risk of injury. The point is to create better function and stronger joints to prevent it from happening again.

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When OSR physical therapist Elizabeth Johnston was in high school, she heard firsthand from her fellow dancers on the dance team about the frustrations over leaking while jumping. It was embarrassing to talk about and, in fact, it seemed no one wanted to discuss it at all. After all, when it comes to the involuntary loss of urine, everyone assumes it’s a bladder problem. The stigma around incontinence is unfortunate, being either associate with an aging problem or a bladder control problem. Yet, many athletes, especially female athletes, experience stress incontinence, and it has nothing to do with their age, bladder control, or if they’ve gone through childbirth.

“Stress incontinence is the involuntary loss of urine from physical exertion,” says Johnston. “When I was a dancer and saw many of my fellow dancers experience the problem, I thought there wasn’t anything to be done to help them. Now, however, as a physical therapist, I know that physical therapy can actually help with this and so much more.”

Incontinence is a problem that widely affects women, but its impact is even more substantial when it comes to physical activity as well as age. When you’re only 17 years old, perfectly healthy and in the prime years of your physical health, and have never been pregnant or given birth, stress incontinence can be confusing, not to mention embarrassing to discuss. Yet, you should discuss it because there are ways to treat incontinences with physical therapy.

What Is Incontinence?

According to the Mayo Clinic, urinary incontinence is the unintentional loss of urine having nothing to do with psychological stress. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with urge or lack thereof, a condition diagnosed as Urge Incontinence (UUI). While general incontinence can happen at any time from anything, stress incontinence is specific to movement:

Stress incontinence happens when physical movement or activity — such as coughing, sneezing, running or heavy lifting — puts pressure (stress) on your bladder.

Incontinence, in general, can manifest itself through stress or urgency, but they are treated differently.

Stress Incontinence In Female Athletes

Stress incontinence affects more than just female dancers. Many runners suffer from it, as well as gymnasts, basketball players, tennis players, among others. It’s so prevalent among female athletes that studies estimate about 47% of exercising women suffer from it, while 25-28% of high school and collegiate athletes have also experienced the problem. The numbers increase even more drastically to 60-80% among those sports that require intra-pelvic pressure like gymnastics, dancing, and figure skating.

With incontinence being so prevalent among female athletes at any life stage, many women think it’s normal. Yet, it’s completely not normal, says Johnston.

“Pelvic problems like stress incontinence are common, yes, but they are not normal,” Johnston said. “There’s something that can be done about it and people shouldn’t have to live with that.”

This is especially the case for young athletes. The biggest factors that put you at risk of stress incontinence is physiology (or anatomy), training that requires repeated heavy lifting, or high impact sports.

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Treatment And Management Options

If stress incontinence is not related to your anatomy, there are many treatment options. However, physical therapy is one of the most effective and non-invasive treatment options. If your incontinence is due to your activity, strengthening your pelvic muscles is the best way to treat the condition.

The point of physical therapy is to improve life by strengthening the appropriate muscles. In the case of incontinence, targeting the pelvic region will help stabilize the area. By stabilizing and strengthening the pelvic muscles, you can prevent leakage. This method of treatment gets your pelvic region to function properly.

Athletes will go to physical therapy to recover from an injury, manage pain, or prevent an injury. Dealing with incontinence should be no different. There’s no need to just live with it, says Johnston, when we can give you a treatment option that leaves you living a better quality of life and gets you back to what you love without being uncomfortable.

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Ah, to be injury-free! It’s an athlete’s best dream. Yet, it’s not just athletes that benefit from being injury-free. Obviously, no one likes to get injured. What’s the best way to avoid injury? You could avoid sports and physical activity at all costs and sit at home, but then you’d mostly just be avoiding life. And, even if you do avoid physical activity and stay at home, you could still get injured simply by moving a chair. Preventing an injury is always easier said than done. But, lucky for us, science has proven that with the right exercises done the right way you can prevent most non-acute injuries and even lower your risk for some acute injuries. Call it functional strength training, targeted strengthening or, the new buzzword in the athletic and fitness communities – prehab.

Essentially, prehab is doing targeted strengthening exercises usually done in rehab before you even end up in rehab. It is making sure you’re doing every movement correctly, paying special attention to the muscles being worked. Really, this is what you should be doing already. Yet, we don’t, which is why we’ve now come up with the fancy new term for doing exercises correctly – prehab.

Rehab Turned Prehab

Hopefully, you haven’t been to physical therapy, and we hope you never have to because that would mean we did our job in keeping you injury-free. Yet, if you’ve ever been to physical therapy or nursed an injury then you probably know exactly what we’re talking about when we say rehab exercises.

These are the exercises that are targeted specifically for the problem area – the muscles that were too weak to function properly, resulting in an injury. These are your balance exercises, your squats, your planks and pushups. In addition, however, prehab also includes stretching and warming up as well as cooling down.

Really, this should already be a part of your overall training. You shouldn’t have to necessarily spend extra time on prehab exercises and routines. In order for prehab to work in preventing injuries, you need to be:

1. Doing exercises properly;
2. Maintaining good posture;
3. Warming up, cooling down, and stretching;
4. Recovering properly;
5. Cross-training;
6. Working muscles that are weak.

This is prehab, but you should already be doing these things as part of a well-balanced training program. Prehab, along with a good training routine, should include core strengthening, coordination and stabilization exercises, and balance exercises. It should also include range of motion and mobility drills that are focused on your greatest weakness.

Prehab can also include sports-specific exercises that an athletic trainer or physical therapist can determine. These exercises are also targeted to each person’s individual weaknesses. This is a form version of prehab that requires periodic evaluation and assessment to make sure it’s constantly reaching the person’s needs.

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Prehab Injury Prevention

So what does prehab actually prevent?

It can prevent or lower your risk of any number of injuries. However, the biggest offenders of stress-induced injuries and pain are often the knees, shoulders, and back. The reason for this is mostly do to improper training, improper movement, and bad posture. Prehab works to fix all these weaknesses before they lead to injury.

Knee pain? Focus on strengthening your hips.

Back pain? Strengthen your core.

Shoulder pain? Work on your range of motion.

Specific and targeted exercises for weakness is the main focus of prehab, and according to studies it works. Researchers found that prehab reduced the need for rehabilitation of knee and hip replacement surgery patients by 73%. This was just for surgery patients, so imagine it’s effectiveness for those athletes who are looking to prevent injury.

Prehab does this by targeting and fixing muscle imbalances and bad posture that can lead to any number of stress-induced injuries. According to the American Council on Exercise, it’s effective and helps the body function normally.

At the center of prehab is a focus on enhancing core function, something that helps to mitigate the muscle imbalances and postural deviations that increase one’s risk of injury when external loads—whether it be equipment used while working out in the gym or things we encounter in everyday life—are applied to movements.

When you work prehab into training, it targets those muscle imbalances that cause dysfunctions in the body, leading to injury. Many think that prehab is only good for athletes. Yet, it’s also good for the person who sits long hours at the desk or the weekend warrior. If you want to be injury-free, try prehab as the best treatment for an injury is to prevent it.

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The best course of action to take when you’re injured is to follow your rehab without fail. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t train or exercise at all. Safe ways to train during injury recovery are smart ways to train always.

When you’re an active athlete, it’s difficult to be sidelined. Que the restlessness, the worry and anxiety, and not to mention boredom when you can’t do what you love. When you can’t be as active due to an injury, it can affect your mental health just as much as your physical health. It can make it more difficult to sleep at night, yet make you feel more tired during the day. Being less active in order to recover from an injury doesn’t mean you can’t do anything, however. It just means that you have to find safe ways to train.

Really, we don’t advocate that you take no rest at all. However, we also don’t think you need to be sitting on the couch for the next six weeks either. It really depends on your injury and where you’re at in the recovery process. The focus during injury recovery needs to be just that – recovering from an injury. However, that doesn’t always mean taking a full sabbatical from your training. You should be following your rehab without fail and the instruction of your physical therapist. Yet, there are safe ways to train during injury recovery.

Cross-Train

If you have a minor injury, you’ll most likely be able to cross-train. How you cross-train is definitely contingent on the type of injury, however. For example, if you have a shoulder injury from tennis, swimming is not the best way to go for cross-training. You might want to choose a spinning class or cycling instead. If you have a knee injury from running, cycling and/or swimming may be OK if it’s not causing you any pain. If high-impact activities are out of the question while you’re recovering, you can try walking, yoga, or Pilates.

Cross-training is an excellent way to stay in shape and not get too far behind on training while still recovering. Moreover, it’s a good way to exercise your body in different ways, which you should already be doing to strengthen your supporting muscles and prevent injuries.

However, cross-training doesn’t mean going all out and exhausting yourself. Regardless of the injury, you still need time to R&R because it’s this rest and recovery time that actually allows your body to build strength. So, you might be able to get on the rowing machine instead of the treadmill, but you still need to take it easy so that your body can heal itself.

Want to learn more about cross-training? Check out our post on The Benefits of Cross-training.

Work On Your Weaknesses

Many non-acute injuries – aka, overtraining and overuse injuries – are caused by muscle imbalances. These are weaknesses that can easily be fixed with targeted strengthening. This means determining first and foremost what caused the injury in the first place. What muscles are weak that caused more stress leading to injury? The best way to find the answer to this question is going to a physical therapist who will be able to assess the injury and determine a treatment program.

Working on your weaknesses can and should be part of the rehab process. It’s a break without taking a break.

What is muscle imbalance? Check it out here.

Adjust Your Training

Similar to cross-training, you can adjust your current training to account for your injury. This is only OK if your injury is not serious and your physical therapist OK’s it. Such techniques as training with lighter weights and high reps or slowing down your cardio can help keep you on track for recovery.

If you don’t have a serious injury, this is a good opportunity to work on your form and technique as you slow everything down. You can target the muscles more directly with more controlled movements, working on strengthening and mobility. Technique, posture, and mobility should never be underestimated for rehabilitation and prevention.

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 Seek Advice On Safe Ways To Train While Injured

If you’re going to be sidelined for a long period of time – like two months or longer – you can ask a physical therapist what you should do to keep the crazy away. A physical therapist is going to know what you can do and – more importantly – what you should be doing for a speedy recovery. A lot of times, this entails specific exercises that you can do at home and away from the clinic as well as eating healthy. You can also do things like an anti-gravity treadmill if your PT allows it and manual therapy such as Graston.

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It’s always uncomfortable to talk about pelvic problems. It can be painful and even embarrassing. But, you shouldn’t have to live these problems. Pelvic physical therapy is non-invasive and leaves you completely in control.

Nobody likes to admit it when they have a problem, especially when that problem is affecting their everyday life. Furthermore, it’s even more difficult to recognize a problem when it involves the pelvic area. Pelvic problems are common, yet they are not normal. There are ways to treat pelvic problems without invasive surgery or medication. It’s called pelvic physical therapy.

Pelvic physical therapy is not as invasive as surgery, nor does it require recovery time because it is your recovery! Furthermore, because of the nature of the program, it gives you much of the control since you’re the one doing the exercises.

There are a lot of benefits to pelvic physical therapy. But, what does it look like and what should you expect?

What Can Pelvic Physical Therapy Treat?

Physical therapy is used to treat any number of pelvic health conditions. The majority of problems are with the pelvic floor, called pelvic floor dysfunction and can sometimes show itself as urinary incontinence or chronic pelvic pain. Most of the time, pelvic problems are caused by weakened pelvic floor muscles. Just like any other muscle in the body, if it’s weak, it cannot function properly or give your body the support it needs. This means that the internal organs of the pelvic region cannot function properly, resulting in incontinence.

Despite what many people believe, leakage and being unable to hold it until you make it the bathroom is not necessarily a bladder or intestinal problem. More often than not, it’s a problem with your pelvic muscles. The fix? Strengthen them through exercises, and this is what pelvic physical therapy is all about.

Pelvic problems that physical therapy can treat include:

• • Urinary incontinence (urge, stress, or mixed types)
  • Urinary urgency, frequency, or hesitancy
  • Pelvic organ prolapse (cystocele, rectocele, uterine prolapse)
  • Chronic pelvic pain
  • Vulvar pain
  • Interstitial Cystitis (IC)/Painful Bladder Syndrome (PBS)
  • Dysparenuria
  • Vaginismus

• Pelvic floor muscle weakness or tension
• Low back, sacroiliac joint, pubic, or coccyx pain
• Pregnancy-related and postpartum musculoskeletal complaints
• Diastasis rectus abdominis (DRA)
• Myofascial restrictions and impaired scar mobility (scars such as those from cesarean sections or episiotomy)

Elizabeth Johnston, DPT, a physical therapist at OSR Physical Therapy, specializes in pelvic health, pelvic conditions, and their treatments through exercises. She sees many diagnoses that are the result of these weakened muscles, which is a part of the musculoskeletal system. This is why physical therapy is so appropriate to treat pelvic problems when it is a diagnosis of the musculoskeletal system.

“Dysfunction of the musculoskeletal system in the region of the pelvis, particularly pelvic floor muscle dysfunction, can be large contributors to the diagnoses that I see and treat,” Johnston says. “This is why I approach treatment of pelvic health conditions from an orthopedic perspective – the same perspective as physical therapy.”

What Is Pelvic PT?

Pelvic physical therapy is unlike any other treatment for pelvic floor dysfunction, urinary incontinence, or any other pelvic problems. Like other problems that physical therapy treats, it focuses on how your muscles are performing and if strengthening those muscles will help solve the problem.

“Pelvic health physical therapy is very similar to orthopedic physical therapy,” says Johnston. “During a session for any other problem, I look at the dysfunctions of the musculoskeletal system. This is no different with pelvic physical therapy. It typically involves looking at and working with the muscles, ligaments, and bones of the pelvis.”

Pelvic physical therapy works to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor as well as teach the patient to relax. Sometimes, too much tension can also be the cause of pain and problems in that area. Relaxation, mobility, and control of the muscles are the focal points for physical therapy.

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What To Expect

Pelvic physical therapy is similar to any other physical therapy session. If you’ve ever been to PT, then you already know what you can expect. However, if you’ve never had to go to physical therapy for treatment, then you can expect to work your muscles as if you were at the gym.

Well, pelvic physical therapy isn’t exactly a workout at the gym. However, the focus is on strengthening that region, so you should be prepared to work at some level. Before beginning the treatment, however, a physical therapist will make an assessment to determine the right treatment.

“I perform a general movement screen of patients and continue my examination more specifically from there based on what I find,” says Johnston. “I assess the pelvic floor muscles for their resting level of tension and strength of contraction. I’ll look for any muscle tender points in and around the pelvis and/or any mobility restrictions. Then, I just treat what I find!”

Treatment can include manual therapy techniques such as joint mobilizations, soft tissue mobilization, trigger point release, passive movement, and/or stretching, and scar mobilizations. It will also include re-learning and teaching your body how to function properly by focusing on when to tighten and when to relax your pelvic muscles. A physical therapist will also give instruction in therapeutic exercises for the muscles in and around the pelvis.

“Another important treatment method we use is re-teaching the body how to function properly,” Johnston noted. “We’ll do functional activities training, such as sit to stand, rolling in bed, walking up and down stairs, squatting, lifting, etc. These activities are done while focusing on the usage of the pelvic muscles.”

In all, pelvic physical therapy is extremely beneficial for just about anyone. It’s non-invasive and oftentimes cheaper than any other treatment and is often covered by health insurance.

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Most competitive swimmers are aware of the injuries associated with their sport. However, many recreational swimmers might not know the risk of knee injury, lower back pain, and even the risk of concussion as hidden swimming injuries.

Swimming is an incredibly physically demanding sport. Yet, it’s also a great way to cross-train and have as an active recovery day. It’s low-impact, which makes it ideal for people recovering from an injury. However, despite its low-impact, you’re still at risk of injuring yourself while swimming. Most people – competitive and recreational swimmers alike – are familiar with the common injuries. However, there are a few hidden swimming injuries that you should be aware of if you want to prevent them.

Swimmer’s Knee

Most competitive swimmers, if not all, are aware of what’s called swimmer’s knee. However, many recreational swimmers might not have even realized that such a low-impact sport could cause knee pain. In fact, it seems so counter-intuitive simply for the reason that many people opt to swim when they have knee pain.

Indeed, because of it’s low-impact, swimming can offer a reprieve from knee pain and even help those recovering from knee injuries by keeping them in shape and strengthening them. However, certain strokes, particularly the breaststroke, are hard on the knees. This is why it’s also known as breaststroke knee and it’s caused by how the legs are kicked during the stroke. The way you kick your legs during a breaststroke subjects the knee to a motion that goes against its structural design and natural movement. Because of this, it stresses the inner ligament of the knee, called the medial collateral ligament (MCL). The more stress is put on this ligament without proper rest and recovery, the more likely you are to injury your knee or have knee pain.

Lower Back Pain

Again, it seems counter-intuitive that swimming would cause lower back pain and injuries. This is because it’s often recommended as an alternative form of exercise for those who suffer from lower back pain while walking or running. Even as odd as it may seem, lower back pain can be quite prevalent for recreational as well as competitive swimmers.

The number one cause of lower back injuries is incorrect technique. If you’re not engaging your core while swimming, your back may overarch to compensate. This puts more pressure and stress on your lower back. It’s most common in those swimmers who do the butterfly stroke or breaststroke without proper technique or taking adequate breaks. Having a strong core will prevent the sinking of the lower back and adding to the stress.

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Concussions

Believe it or not but concussions can be quite prevalent among swimmers. The rate is certainly not as high as in contact sports. However, it’s still a risk due to running into other swimmers as well as hitting the concrete wall. Furthermore, it can also happen by slipping on the deck.

No strengthening exercises and proper technique can prevent an acute accident to the head during swimming. However, what can help prevent a concussion is always being aware of your surroundings. Knowing where other swimmers are located as well as having a good spatial awareness between you and the wall can prevent you from hitting your head.

Prevention Through Awareness Of Hidden Swimming Injuries

You can prevent injuries through strengthening, correct training, and proper technique, among other ways. However, you should never underestimate the role education and awareness of injuries has in preventing injuries. Many sports have injuries that are “hidden” or, at least, not well-known. Being fully aware of the dangers of your sport or exercise can help you prevent injuries. You can lower your risk of making a mistake and becoming injured or having to deal with pain.

Relevant Content:
Can You Predict Sports Injuries?
Four Common Swimming Injuries
Injury Prevention 101