Sport Performance & Injury

Sport and activity-related injuries cover a huge range, from acute events like ankle sprains, hamstring tears and shoulder dislocations, through to overuse conditions that build up gradually over weeks or months of training. Whatever the specific injury, how it’s managed in the days and weeks afterward has a major influence on how completely — and how quickly — you get back to full activity.

The way sports injuries are managed has changed significantly in recent years. Where a “rest until it stops hurting” approach was once the default advice, current evidence points toward early, carefully guided movement as the better path for most injuries — a shift that applies whether the injury happened on the field, in the gym, at work, or from ordinary bad luck.

Why guided movement matters more than rest

Complete rest and immobilisation feel intuitively safe, but they carry a real cost: muscles around an injured area weaken quickly when they’re not used, joints stiffen, and the tissue that’s meant to be healing doesn’t get the graded loading it needs to rebuild strength and resilience. This doesn’t mean pushing through pain — the RICE approach (rest, ice, compression, elevation) still has a role in the first 24 to 48 hours for managing acute swelling and pain. But once that initial window passes, current best practice moves toward reintroducing movement and load in a structured, staged way, rather than waiting for pain to disappear entirely before doing anything.

Andrew’s approach to sports injury rehabilitation

Andrew breaks every injury into clear phases, each with specific goals and criteria to meet before progressing to the next. This staged approach applies whether the injury is a soft tissue strain, a joint sprain, or a more significant injury requiring surgery. Early phases typically focus on managing pain and swelling and protecting the injured tissue while restoring basic movement. Middle phases build strength and control, progressively increasing the demand placed on the injured area as it tolerates more load. Later phases work toward the specific demands of your sport or activity — including the speed, power, agility or endurance components relevant to what you’re returning to — so that “recovered” actually means ready for the real demands you’ll face, not just pain-free at rest.

Getting the pace of this progression right is central to good rehabilitation. Moving too fast through the phases risks re-injury, sometimes worse than the original problem; being overly cautious delays your return to sport or activity unnecessarily and can allow deconditioning to set in. Andrew’s staged criteria are designed to avoid both of these traps.

When to see a physiotherapist

It’s worth seeing Andrew as soon as practical after a sports injury occurs, rather than waiting to see if it settles on its own. An early assessment means treatment and any appropriate rehab exercises can start sooner, and it avoids the risk of an overly cautious or poorly informed approach in the first few days inadvertently setting your recovery back. Seek urgent medical attention instead of a routine physiotherapy appointment for a suspected fracture, a joint that’s visibly deformed, a traumatic injury with significant swelling or an inability to bear any weight, or any injury involving loss of consciousness or head trauma.

Physiotherapy treatment for sports injuries

While the specific techniques used depend heavily on the injury itself, treatment for most sports injuries draws on:

• Manual therapy to manage pain and swelling, restore joint and soft tissue mobility, and address compensatory tension that builds up around an injured area
• Exercise rehabilitation — a customised, staged programme setting out exactly which exercises are appropriate for your current phase, at what intensity, and how often, progressing in line with current evidence-based practice as your injury allows

Nearly every sports injury Andrew treats is paired with this kind of structured exercise programme, since it’s the progressive loading over time — not the hands-on treatment alone — that rebuilds the strength, control and resilience needed for a full return to sport.

What to expect from treatment

Timeframes for sports injury recovery vary enormously depending on the specific injury, its severity, and the physical demands of your sport or activity. Andrew sets clear criteria for each phase of your rehabilitation so that progression is based on objective markers of strength, control and function, rather than guesswork or simply how many weeks have passed. This is particularly important for a safe return to sport, where returning based on a calendar date rather than actual readiness is a common cause of re-injury.

Beyond recovery — reducing the risk of future injury

For many athletes, addressing the injury itself is only part of the picture. Andrew also works with people on the strength, mobility and movement quality factors that reduce the likelihood of the same injury — or a related one — happening again, alongside broader performance goals where relevant. This forward-looking element is usually built into the later stages of rehabilitation, once the original injury has settled.