Crossfit Lilydale Ranges & Exercise Thought
Exercise Thought‘s Principal, Sam Suke, sat down with Crossfit Lilydale Ranges coaches Georgia Beeby and Drew Ayres to discuss priorities in Member care. Coaches and Members of Crossfit Lilydale Ranges have trusted Exercise Thought’s Physiotherapists to understand their body, recover from injury and continue training throughout the rehabilitation journey. Sam, Georgia and Drew spoke recently to identify the 4 essentials for a good physiotherapy service within the context of CrossFit.
Maintain momentum
Communication between Coaches, Physiotherapist & Member/Athlete
Shared understanding, and
Don’t freak out
Essential 1: Maintain momentum
When injury or pain strikes, we can be fooled into thinking that we need to stop and that we will lose the progress we’ve gained. “Keep the athlete moving”, said Coach Drew. “Agreed, they must get a workout during rehab”, added Sam. CrossFit is infinitely scalable which enables an athlete to continue moving both injured and healthy body parts throughout rehabilitation. Healthy, active people recover faster than those who are sedentary. The social and psychological health benefits of continuing one’s health routines, such as attending the CrossFit box for workouts with friends and coaches, enables a person to recover faster. Continuing training also enables the person to improve on other weaknesses or skills that are able to be practiced whilst resting or caring for the recovering body part. Collaboration between the Member, Coach and Physiotherapist can easily identify skill techniques, movement patterns or contributing factors that can be tweaked to achieve better performance and lesser pain without discontinuing training.
Essential 2: Communication between Physiotherapists and Coaches
Collaboration between Physiotherapists, Coaches and the Member/Athlete enables a faster recovery and continuity of training. It’s not only brings about a faster resolution to pain and injury but also greater progress towards long-term fitness goals. A physiotherapist can identify the diagnosis & highlight the contributing factors (load changes, recovery factors, body imbalances etc). Conveying this information to Coaches means that the Member’s/Athlete’s WOD can be personalized to maximize the speed of recovery without unnecessary sacrificing of participation, fitness & health. Coaches can then feedback to physiotherapist on the Members/Athletes performance in the box. This can include biomechanical observations, exercise adjustments or modifications that support recovery. Coaches have typically known the Member/Athlete more deeply and for a longer term than the physiotherapist which can be helpful in identify non-physical factors that influence recovery (e.g. stress, sleep quality, social dynamics & life changes).
Essential 3: A shared understanding brought about by the physiotherapist experiencing CrossFit & the Coaches experiencing physiotherapy
In order to provide the most effective care of Members/Athletes, the Coaches and Physiotherapist must understand both CrossFit and Physiotherapy. Coaches Drew and Georgia personally understand the role and value of physiotherapy and apply what they have learned through their own experience in helping others. In the same vein, Physiotherapists at Exercise Thought have practiced CrossFit (most often at the “Saturday Smasher” Community WOD hosted by CFLR on Saturday mornings). Practicing CrossFit enables a Physiotherapist to intimately understand the physical, psychological & social benefits (and demands) of the craft, each of which can then be incorporated into a Member’s/Client’s personalized rehabilitation plan.
Essential 4: Don’t freak the Member/Athlete out
Injury can be amplified, exacerbated or complicated if miscommunicated, mistreated or misunderstood. A common way that injury can be dramatized is with medical jargon. Physiotherapist’s at Exercise Thought pride themselves in making the complex simple by using normal non-medical language & easy solutions that chart a course toward full recovery. Sometimes a Member/Athlete will assume that injury forces them to stop training. A physiotherapist is perfectly positioned to reassure the athlete that training can and should continue in most cases (perhaps with targeted modifications). This reassurance is made possible by the physiotherapist’s deep understanding of injury, pathology, biomechanics, healing timeframes & the nature of body tissues (muscles, nerves, bone, tendons, joints, fascia, ligaments etc). This reassurance is further enabled by the confidence Exercise Thought’s physiotherapist have that CFLR’s Coaches genuinely care about their Member’s/Athlete’s wellbeing. CFLR is both energizing, encouraging & also sensible. Some approaches to CrossFit throw caution to the wind and risk stupid or unnecessary injuries. CFLR sets itself apart by demonstrating time and again a focus on health that goals beyond physical performance. Another common rehab error is misunderstanding the results from medical imaging. Every human has imperfections on the outside and inside of their body. None of us are exactly symmetrical, for example. The same is true of imaging results (MRI, CT, x-ray, ultrasound). The expensiveness & sophistication of these modern technologies tempt us to assume that they possess a greater intelligence then do our own bodies. Scans can be helpful AND harmful. Scans can be helpful when the results of the scan match with the person’s symptoms or when a scan can rule-out an injury. For example, in a person experiencing symptoms characteristic of a lumbar (lower spine) disc injury a scan is expected to show an enlargement of the affected disc and may also show the disc compressing a nerve. This can be predicted by the history and physical exam done in a physiotherapy consultation and so a scan is usually a waste or time and money. Did you know that many disc bulges are painfree? In fact, most people have a disc bulge that they never knew about. A beautiful study demonstrated this in 2015 (Systematic Literature Review of Imaging Features of Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations ). This is where scans can be harmful. After getting a scan, a person may begin to worry or concern themselves with a normal abnormality that has not caused them any pain and shouldn’t change how they live life. A physiotherapist can help you to interpret your scans and their relevance to your pain or injury. A physiotherapist can also reassure you when scan results are normal for someone your age. Exercise Thought does refer Clients for scans, but does not sensibly with a focus on symptoms and recovery. After all, we treat people and not pictures.
If you’d like to try CrossFit, check out CrossFit Lilydale Ranges.
If you’d like a physiotherapist to help you start or continue CrossFit, check out Exercise Thought.
Principal
Exercise Thought Physiotherapy