Sports Therapy Centre
The Old Factory Offices, Hawley Road,
Hinckley, Leics, LE10 0PR
(opposite Balloonatics)
Tel: 07957 330704/07376 320060
Established 2014
Sports Therapy Centre and Hungry 4Fitness
Sports Therapy Centre has recently partnered with Hungry 4Fitness, a website developed by a team of dedicated health and exercise professionals. Hungry 4Fitness brings you a wealth of training knowledge including weight-loss programmes, exercise tutorials, best fitness equipment, and enough workouts to keep you active for months!
Sports Massage
Massage for specific problem areas - DON'T CONFUSE THIS WITH A DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE ROUTINE, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!
Sports massage is essential maintenance for the muscle fibres in anyone that is active. By focusing on the particular muscle groups that are under stress, specific deep tissue massage targets the layers , which can reduce adhesions and relieve muscle soreness - especially good for back pain relief.
Recovery after activity can be quicker, through utilizing sports massage to eliminate the lactic acid that builds up inside muscles. Muscles can then remain flexible, leaving you able to perform again, in a much shorter timescale, rather than just resting.
Regular massages can decrease the chances of picking up an injury, or identify a potential one and treat it before it becomes debilitating.
Muscle fibres are either working, or they are not, there is no inbetween. They experience fatigue when they are continually required to work, like the legs of a distance runner or a swimmer continually doing lengths of a pool. With that fatigue, comes breakdown, and muscle fibres glue themselves together to support each other. This then leaves them sore and feeling tight. Sports massage can unstick those fibres and realign them in their correct manner. This in turn, decreases pain and enables an individual to continue with their chosen activities.
TREATMENTS ARE BENEFICIAL TO ANYONE WITH MUSCULAR PROBLEMS, whether or not they take part in sporting activities. Even sitting at a desk all day can fatigue back and shoulder muscles!
Injury & Rehabilitation
Utilising techniques taught by John Gibbons at Oxford University, to deal with specific injuries, this treatment has a different take on the usual sports massage.
Joint and muscle tests are conducted to assess the problem, then various mobilisation, stretching, and massage techniques are combined to help alleviate pain, and start the process to return the muscle/joint to normality.
Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy promotes recovery in illness, injury or disability. It aims to restore movement and functional ability to the person’s full potential. Physiotherapy can help at any time in your life and in many different ways, depending on your needs and circumstances. Physiotherapy can be helpful in managing a long-term medical condition such as arthritis or an injury. Treatment can reduce pain, increase mobility and return you to your normal activities. You can also recover faster from illness and avoid hospital admissions with the help of physiotherapy.
Cupping/Myofascial Release
Traditional cupping is an ancient Eastern practice, working with the meridians of the body, using glass cups and a naked flame to heat the cup (fire cupping), placing them on the body to produce a suction vacuum. There has been an adaptation of it though, for western use, with regards to sports enhancement.
Favouring plastic vacuum cups, although fire cupping can be used, the cups are put in strategic places on the body. This will then promote blood flow to the area and draw the tissue upwards, instead of being pushed downwards like in a massage. It is because of the vacuum, that the bruise effect is seen on the skin. Unlike a bruise though, a trauma is not caused to give the colouration. In areas where there are specific problems, the colouration will be more evident than in areas where there are not. The suction effect of the vacuum will increase blood flow (aiding injury recovery due to the increased nutrients with increased blood flow), increase lymphatic circulation (drawing out toxins from the body), increase joint mobility through the releasing of fascia, which can also then ease pain in muscles too, and help break up scar tissue.
Cupping can be done by leaving the cups on the body where they are placed, or they can be used to massage with, thereby moving the cups with a light vacuum, over the skin.
Dry Needling
Dry Needling is a general term for a treatment procedure that involves inserting a disposable, sterile, monofilament needle into a muscle that is producing pain and typically contains a trigger point (knot). There is no injectable solution and the needle that is used is very thin. It is called “Dry” Needling because there is no solution injected as with a hypodermic needle that is used for things like blood tests. With Dry Needling, the needle itself and the effects it produces within the tissue, is the treatment.
Most clients will not even feel the needle penetrate the skin, but once it advances into the muscle, the discomfort can vary from patient to patient. Usually a healthy muscle feels very little, if any, discomfort upon insertion of the needle; however, if the muscle is sensitive and shortened or contains active trigger points, the client may feel a sensation like a quick contract then release, often referred to as a 'twitch response".
When an injury occurs from repetitive use or acute trauma, inflammation will be produced from the damaged tissues. The damaged tissues will also go into a protective tension state or contracture to guard against further damage from utilizing the injured tissue. This contracture and inflammation inhibit microcirculation, which limits both the oxygen rich blood reaching the injury and the waste products leaving the injury. The injury site becomes hypoxic (decreased in oxygen) which stimulates the body to produce fibroblasts, which is a cell that produces fibrosis or more commonly known, scar tissue. The scarring builds up around the muscles and tissues, limiting the tissues ability to fully function (lengthen/shorten) and can also cause compression and irritation of nerves (such as carpal tunnel syndrome) – all of which inevitably lead to biomechanical disturbances in gait and function i.e. limited range of movement.
When a needle is inserted into muscle it will also produce a controlled lesion and will cut between three to fifteen thousand individual muscle fibers. The body considers the needle as a foreign invader and will activate the immune system as a response. The cut muscle fibers also produce an inflammatory reaction that your body will respond to not just locally but all over the body to reduce inflammation systemically.
Dry needling is an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain, rehabilitation from injury, and even pain and injury prevention, with very few side effects.
Pregnancy Massage
Specific massage for our active ladies, to help them train for as long as they are comfortable to.
Our Comfy Client Cushions are used to help support baby, so our therapist can reach all the aching areas, whilst the client relaxes on their side.
Taping & Strapping
You've seen the funky coloured tape that sports people are wearing, well we can apply it to you and teach you how to put it on yourself, saving you time and money.
We use the extra sticky Sport Tape, to ensure you get maximum benefit from it, as it won't peel off like cheap brands tend to, when you get hot!
Be Activated
A POWERFUL NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WHY THE BODY BECOMES DYSFUNCTIONAL.
The Be Activated philosophy will change they way you work. Simple changes to incorrectly functioning muscles allow the body to make immediate shifts towards resilience, strength and speed.
The results are incredible. An Activated body will quickly change from a state of tension and pain, to a strong relaxed state of excellent performance. When we do the right thing, the body responds immediately.
Be Activated is used globally by elite sports teams, celebrities, the fitness industry and health practitioners alike. As well as treating injuries and enhancing sporting performance, it’s a powerful tool for stress management, and can quickly break common patterns of movement dysfunction and chronic pain.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Our body has two priorities for survival; to breathe and to move – and without both – we will die! Our body finds ways to meet those priorities, and it’s willing to sacrifice anything else in order to do this.
Measurable reductions in strength, power, flexibility and endurance often occur, leaving our bodies less resilient, and at risk of poor performance, pain and dysfunction, both in the way we move and the way we behave. If you experience a traumatic event or injury, you’ll notice the slow and gradual decline in function and performance. These compensations then get tired, and eventually break.
The result is at best is a loss of energy, at worst constant chronic pain and reduced function. And it’s simple to reverse when you really honour what your body needs to function correctly.
The Be Activated system starts by testing what your body is doing now, so that changes can be clearly measured. This is done by simple muscle resistance, strength and flexibility tests.
The next step is to activate the body to breathe correctly (nearly everyone still gets this wrong).
We then run through the body’s sequencing patterns, testing and activating, so muscles and structures can return to their correct right patterns. A stress-free body can go back to working at full capacity, with full energy. The measurements are important, but what you feel is always foremost in our minds as we work.
It’s all done using Activations which can be used safely and immediately, in any setting.
That doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be indestructible for eternity! Chronic muscle patterns will need reminding.
Further information on Be Activated can be found at www.douglasheel.com
Sports Nutrition
Greg is our sports nutritionist, you can find out about him here. He can look at what your nutritional macros currently are, and then tailor them to better suit your sporting needs, thereby fuelling your body optimally for the very best performance.