Mick Hughes:
Sports & Exercise Physiotherapist
M. Sports Physio, B. Physio, B.Ex. Sci.

I shared a link to a paper on LinkedIn recently regarding landing technique in adolescent females during a growth spurt. This research indicated that, during a growth spurt, the female athlete will change their landing pattern in a way that is similar to the pattern of movement that results in an ACL injury (valgus collapse at the hip/knee) (1). This information is extremely valuable to us as health care providers, coaches and parents, because if you know that your athlete or

Concussion is a hot topic in sporting circles at the moment. It has gained a lot of media attention recently, and there has been a HUGE amount of research published on the topic in the last 5 years. In Australia, all of the major professional sporting codes have implemented strict concussion rules whereby a player who has signs and symptoms of a concussion, is not allowed to return to the field of play. The concussed player must then also complete a graduated 7-10 day return

I am probably wearing my Exercise Physiologist hat, more so than my Physiotherapist hat as I write this post today, but I think us physios should be doing a lot more than what we currently do in terms of health promotion and promoting active lifestyles to our patients. The term "sitting is the new smoking", has gained some media attention in the last few years (and rightfully so), in the fact that sedentary behavior has been linked to lifestyle diseases, including type 2 diab

For those of you that know me well, you would know that I've got a special interest in the adolescent athletic population. Now I know I've been banging on about this over the last few months on LinkedIn and Twitter, but it bothers me that there are still misunderstandings regarding resistance/strength training in this age group. In my clinical experience, the misunderstanding often comes from well-meaning parents, who unfortunately have been misinformed believing that strengt

Earlier this month I shared a post about the financial cost of sporting injuries to teenage kids in Victoria between 2004-10. It's scary. REALLY, REALLY SCARY. The economic cost to the public health system was $265 million in a 7-year period on ALL sports injuries, including $110 million on lower limb injuries alone! And that is just the state of Victoria. I hate to think what all states combined would be. But what is more scary - which isn't counted in this figure - is the f

Earlier on this week I wrote a blog on Load Management, specifically on the topic of the acute to chronic workload ratio (ACWR). As mentioned in the blog, this was one topic that I found to be very useful in trying to manage non-contact, soft tissue "overuse" (or "under-prepared") injuries. The other topic that I found to be equally important for us working with patients/athletes with these type of injuries is the effect of detraining - and it goes hand in hand ACWR. As the

I often get asked by my patients how to best manage their injuries at home or in the gym. The question that they often ask is: Should I stretch? Or should I strengthen? Now to be honest it's not an easy answer, because every musculoskeletal complaint can present very differently between patients, and certainly things are very different between different stages of recovery that the injury is in. A perfect example of this is avoiding stretching for a reactive insertional Achill

I had a patient present last week who hurt her knee in the first few minutes of a social game of basketball. She reported that she was trying to side-step an opponent, felt a pop in her knee and immediate pain. She collapsed to the ground, was unable to play on, and noticed her knee swell within 2 hours. She presented to me the next day, and when I heard her history - and saw the size of her knee - I feared the worst for her. I referred her to a GP who subsequently referred f

I cover ACL injuries quite a bit in my blogs, and the reason for this is fairly straight forward: They are one of the most devastating injuries to sustain in sport! They can stop a blossoming sporting career dead in its tracks, or stop a player from reaching their full potential. Sometimes they can be the end of a player’s career. Furthermore, ACL injury comes at high physical, emotional and financial cost to the athlete, and the very sad thing is, a high percentage of ACL in