PRE AND POST-OPERATIVE REHABILITATION

Surgery can be a huge deal for athletes

It can take you out of the game for a long period of time, missing crucial minutes training and playing sport. It can also take a significant mental toll. Watching your team mates play from the sideline while you’re in crutches is never a good feeling. Missing potential opportunities to make rep teams or tournaments can take also take a huge toll on one’s sporting career development.

The most important thing for athletes is actually training and playing their chosen sport. Having surgery, be it a shoulder reconstruction or an ACL surgery, directly limits your playing and training time which can hinder one’s athletic development. Hence, rehabilitating an injury as efficiently as possible after surgery is crucial to limit time missed training and playing your chosen sport.

It’s not uncommon for Athletes to miss 12-18months of game time just for a shoulder reconstruction, which should have only taken 6-8 months to rehab. Seeing the look on a young athletes face who was expected to return at the start of the season, only to be told they still aren’t ready….. that’s the look we aim to never to see for our athletes!!

What’s worse? A young athlete returning to sport after a 6-8 month rehab, only to re-injure the operation site, having to return to rehab, or worse…. having to have another surgery

Delayed return times and re-injury can occur for a number of reasons, but what we consistently see is a sub-optimal sports rehab process, which lacks specific, measurable milestones throughout the process

In order to ensure athletes will return in a timely manner post-surgery, we work BACKWARDS from what the athlete needs to the achieve to meet the demands of their chosen sport. For example, a Rugby League forward may play on average 50-60minute per game, cover a total distance of 5km in which 3km of that is jogging and 300m sprinting (with the remainder at a moderate pace)and has approx 35 total collisions. This obviously changes dependant upon the position of the athlete and the level they play. Based on these statistics, we map out the criteria in which our athletes need to achieve throughout the recovery process, thereby we can ensure that our athletes are ready to meet the demands of the game. Essentially, we make the gap between rehab and playing your sport as small as possible.

These criteria are based on the evidence which is carried out by researchers working at the highest level of sports injury management. We learn from the best in the field, not only in Australia but from around the world, and we implement it here at Sports and Functional. We do that because it works. High performance teams and athletes around the world are advised by the best in sports injury management who are in the trenches doing the research to find out what actually works and what doesn’t. Why not copy them and implement that for our athletes?

Their methods are always changing, the research is always evolving, therefore we change our methods and evolve our injury management protocols with them. So if you’re an athlete under Sports and Functional Physio, rest assured that we aren’t just guessing, or making stuff up as we go, we’re implementing the strategies from the highest level of sports and athletic injury management

Not to mention, the equipment we have access to in our high performance facility at the Powerhouse Performance and Recovery Centre, which takes your post-op management to a whole new level. See

our facility for more details

Our Multi-Disciplinary approach to Post-Operative Management

The relationships within an athletes medical team is crucial. We aim to establish close relationships with your surgeon as we highly value the multi-disciplinary approach to athlete care. We feel that your specialists should be aware of what we plan to implement with you throughout your rehab rehab journey

Each time you visit your surgeon post-op, we provide a comprehensive report containing all your rehab milestones, testing numbers and rehab progressions so that your surgeon has a clear understanding of your rehab journey progressions. Not only this, but it’s not uncommon for us to accompany you to a post-op surgical appointment, even observe your actual surgery. This can be invaluable for your rehab progression as we can gain further insight into your operation details and the specific preferences your surgeon has for your rehab process.

If we can’t attend, we at least try to zoom call your surgeon during your post-op appointment to accompany your in depth rehab progression report.

Each ACL or Meniscus surgery is not just “an ACL or meniscus surgery”. What graft did the surgeon use? What type of meniscus tear was it? Were there any surgical complications? Was there any chondral (cartilage) damage? Where was the meniscus tear located? Etc etc

No matter the surgery or body part, we make it a priority to read the scans, the surgeon report, the discharge criteria, and maintain a close relationship with your surgeon throughout your recovery process. This approach has been key to developing our post-operative rehab stream as we’ve been able to gain crucial insights as to the different intricacies involved with different surgeries.

So don’t settle for a run-of-the mill post-op recovery. Make sure you receive high quality, evidence based, athlete centred care to ensure a full recovery from your surgery

Click the link below to book now, or book a free consultation call to speak to one of our physio’s about how we can help you!