Do you experience shin pain with activities such as running? Is your shin tender to touch, and maybe even swollen? Sure, the pain settles down with rest, but it never goes completely, and you feel like it may be getting worse.

Tibial stress fractures are common overuse injuries effecting up to 20% of athletes and people new to running. Tibial stress fractures are caused by repetitive loading on your tibia (shin bone) over time. Tibial stress fractures are often seen in running and jumping sports and can be linked to an increased volume or intensity of training workload. This could be an athlete trying to increase intensity for an upcoming event or an average person trying to get back into running.
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If left without intervention, the shin pain will get worse and continue to reoccur. The longer treatment gets delayed, the longer the road to recovery will be. This will lead to your runs or hobbies becoming more painful and less enjoyable, which is the last thing you need!

Do you, or have you ever had elbow pain with gripping or wrist movements? Has a simple task like opening a jar triggered pain around your elbow? If so, this article will be a game changer!

What you are experiencing is called lateral epicondylalgia A.K.A tennis elbow. Now I know what you must be thinking: “but I don’t even play tennis! So what does tennis elbow have to do with me?” While tennis elbow is common in tennis players, with one in two players experiencing it at some stage in their career (2), it is also common in repetitive upper extremity activities. For this reason, it is commonly seen in people with repetitive one-sides movements in their jobs such as electricians, carpenters, gardeners and desk bound jobs (3).

Tennis elbow is an overuse injury that can linger if left untreated and it can cause a harmful loop where the more you use your arm the more it starts to hurt. This can make day to day activities a nightmare, especially considering that the majority of cases are in the dominant arm. Some patients also experience interrupted sleep, with things like pulling up the covers triggering pain.

Research suggests that exercise and hands-on physiotherapy is the most effective course of action, above the use of injection and medications (1). Physiotherapy will work towards identifying the problem and target it using tailored treatment. This can rectify imbalances and de-load overstressed structures, ultimately breaking the overuse cycle and allowing healing to occur.

Tennis elbow pain can be caused by many things and it is a physiotherapists role to identify the primary contributors. This could include:

• Tendonopathy, the tendon (the muscle bone attachment tissue) is unhealthy.
• The neck is a background driver to the problem.
• The nerve system ‘changes gear’ and works differently in response to movement and use.
• One of the elbow joints is inflamed, stiff or potentially not stable.

There may be a combination of all of these factors.

Depending on the cause, physiotherapy will likely involve the following:
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Muscle and tendon training: This an include making the muscle contract without moving, tightening as it is being stretched or we tech you to slide the radial nerve as it passes the elbow to sooth and add load resilience.
 
Structure de-loading: Therapeutic tape can be used to offload the soft tissues to allow them to recover and prevent the nerve system over-reacting, by giving it some downtime from being over stimulated. Don’t forget that the soft tissue re-positioning may also improve muscle function, a good reason to see tape as more than a crutch.
 
Optimal loading: Changing how you do certain provocative things will change how much load is being put through certain structures. This could involve changing your grip, wrist position to lift carry and push as well as pacing activities to do as much but do it differently.
 
So what are you waiting for?! If you want to end all the tennis elbow racquet and give your elbow the love it deserves, serve up some of these tips and check out our video above by clicking on the image, to help you net some results!

Have you heard the common line that weights training during puberty/adolescents will damage growth plates and stunt growth? In reality there is ZERO evidence to support this statement.

Despite there being numerous studies that have disproven impaired skeletal maturation from weights training in both long and short term [1][2][3][4], the belief still appears to be heavily rooted in today’s training and rehabilitation.

What people frequently fail to realise is that resistance training can play a vital role in young athlete training as well as injury prevention. Relying on things like cardiovascular endurance and bodyweight exercises are simply not enough to develop the dynamic stability and strength to protect joints and a growing athlete.

Resistance training is most appropriate to a young athlete when body weight does not provide enough resistance, or when bodyweight simply cant substitute a weight. An example of this could be adding weighted leg press for a young AFL player to help with their vertical jump or adding rotator cuff strengthening to a young gymnast.

If these types of resistance training are not put into place not only could you hinder a young athletes sporting potential but you also put them at risk of injury/reinjury which in some instances can lead to a vicious cycle of reinjury.

So keeping a child or young athlete performing at their potential and remaining injury free is no longer dictated by doing tackle or agility drills, it needs to incorporate a level of resistance training to build up stabilising muscles and strengthen soft tissue.
Resistance training is widely used in adult sport so why isn’t it used in young athletes? Research conducted on the topic suggests that when performed appropriately and with good technique that resistance training provides benefits for youth athletes including:

• Stronger bones
• Reduction in injury rates
• Increased strength, speed and power

Its completely understandable for parents to have reservations about resistance training with their children, especially when its been hammered in for so long that “resistance training stunts growth”. If we think about in logically though, the forces a child’s body goes through on and off the pitch such as hard tackles, jumping out of trees and falling from play equipment far exceed the forces that weights put through the skeletal system.

So what’s the youngest age a child can start resistance training then? The Australian Strength and Conditioning Association [ASaCA] suggest the youngest a child COULD start resistance training is 6 years old!!! This isn’t to say that all 6 year old should sign up for a gym membership though, the ASaCA highlights the need for young athletes that are involved in a resistance training program to “have the maturity to follow clear instructions and an appreciation of the dangers present when training”[5].

So to summarise, there is no evidence to support that resistance training will damage growth plates and stunt growth in the short or long term but there is evidence to suggest resistance training leads to stronger bones, reduction in injury rates and increased strength, speed and power.