Go Beyond Physio – Unique ELEVATE Performance Rehab Pathway

Physio Is Just The Beginning

Are you sick of getting injured at the gym or the sports field? Or feel like you have those niggling or recurring injuries that you just can’t seem to shake off? Or maybe your running has hit a ceiling and you just can’t seem to break through. If this sounds like you, then you are our ideal client.

Our unique ELEVATE Performance rehab Pathway brings you a structured way to transition smoothly from injury management, through foundation strengthening, and then progressing to performance training. Our team of physio’s, exercise physiologists, Clinical Pilates instructors and running coaches work closely to make sure you see the right person at the right time, every step of the way.

The ELEVATE Performance Rehab Pathway – Moving Beyond Physio

The ELEVATE Performance Rehab Pathway has 3 main phases: 1. RELIEVE. 2. RESTORE. 3. ELEVATE.

Lets review these 3 phases to highlight the goals of each one.

1. The RELIEVE Phase – Physio Is The Focus

The Relieve phase is the first stage in the ELEVATE Performance Rehab Pathway. It focuses on relieving your pain as fast as possible. This lets you get moving again and doing regular activities as normally as possible while still protecting your injury.

Physiotherapy is the main treatment involved in this stage. Your physio will give you a thorough assessment to accurately diagnose your injury as quickly as possible. If you require scans such as an x-ray or MRI your physio will discuss this with you and refer you to the appropriate provider, however this is usually not necessary.

Once you and your physio have diagnosed your injury, they will discuss your treatment plan with you. Making sure you are both in agreement about priorities and goals is important because it helps align expectations about what is needed, how long it is expected to take, what your role will be (eg modification of training or activities, home exercises…), and what your physio will do along the way.

Once you and your physio are both on the same page agreed on your management plan, we focus on relieving your pain and improving your movement. This will usually involve a mix of hands-on treatment (“manual therapy”) and targeted exercise. As your pain resolves more emphasis goes onto progressing your exercises. The mix of exercise versus manual therapy, and the time the Relieve phase lasts for, will vary for each person.

2. The RESTORE Phase – Exercise Takes Over

Once your pain is settling down, the real work can begin. The RESTORE phase is all about exercise, whether it’s with your physio or you progress onto other services like Exercise Physiology or Clinical Pilates. Research shows that for almost every musculoskeletal injury you are likely to have, building more strength once your acute pain has gone is the most important and effective part of your treatment.

Exercise in this stage often has two areas to work on. The first is helping to fully resolve your current injury, eg getting rid of those last remaining niggles as you get back to exercise. The second is minimising future injuries or recurrences. We call this building resilience, and the big message is “the stronger you are, the more resilient you are”. Becoming more resilient means your body can handle the loading demands of training, sports, exercise, and also daily life like sitting at a computer for 40+ hours each week (this “loading” is often forgotten or under-estimated because it’s not heavy or unusual, but sustained postures mean sustained loading of tissues, and this can lead to pain just like a sports injury can – it’s just a different type of loading!)

The target areas for increasing your strength and resilience will vary greatly from person to person however, the common areas we asses and need to work on are;

– Mobility – how far can you move in different areas of your body, and with your body as a whole

– Stability And Control – how well can you control your body as you move

– Strength – how strong is your body as you move through different positions, joint angles, muscle lengths and whole-body alignments

Think of the RESTORE phase as making your body more resilient against future injury by building a solid foundation for strong high-quality full-range movement.

3. The ELEVATE Phase – Define And Improve Improve Your Performance

This heading might seem strange – “Define And Improve Your Performance” – so what does this mean? Well, it means that everyone’s definition of “performance” is going to be different, and it’s not always what you think.

When we, as physios and exercise physiologists, talk about “performance”, most people think we are talking about high-level sports performance. In some cases yes we are, for example we provide strength and conditioning to national and Olympic level runners. But we define “performance” much more broadly, and include many more people when we speak about helping our clients “perform better”.

Our definition of “performance” means whatever our individual clients define as being important to them. For some it may be keeping generally fit and healthy while they juggle being a mum of 2 young kids, working a demanding job plus still trying to keep an active social life. For others it may be squeezing in another 2 or 3 seasons of over 45s soccer before they feel they have to retire. Maybe it’s your GP advising you that your BMI (weight) and blood pressure are creeping up and you need to get back to regular exercise to maintain a healthy weight and cardiovascular capacity.

We have had clients who use exercise almost purely for mental health. By the way, a mountain of research shows that regular exercise is a highly effective way to improve mental health, either instead of drugs or as an adjunct to medication to improve effectiveness and prevent side-effects.

For others it may be that they have run 3 half-marathons and now have a goal to get through a full one. They may not be really concerned about their time, but just being able to finish it!

The point is, when we work with clients we define performance as whatever is important to that individual client, what are their goals and priorities. For some it’s making it through their 20th soccer season, for others it’s making it to the next Commonwealth games. We meet you at your level, and we see everyone’s definition of performance as equally important, valid and worth working for.

To help you boost your performance we give you access to degree-qualified coaches across a range of exercise options;

– Personal Training: 1:1 and partnered sessions are available

– Group Fitness: we are experts at helping people get back to training after a break due to injury or lifestyle factors, and with maximum 6 clients per session for the perfect balance of close supervision and program individualisation with an affordable weekly membership

– Pilates: 1:1 and small-group (maximum 4 clients) sessions available, with physio instructors who have advanced training in Pilates for fitness and injury rehab

– Running Strength And Conditioning: the Central Performance Running Centre provides specialist strength and conditioning programs for runners of all abilities. Maximise your performance and minimise your injuries.

The Main Message – Integrated Care From A Team Of Experts Working Together

At Central Performance we’re all about teamwork and communication. We believe that by having physios, exercise physiologists, Pilates instructors, running coaches and strength & conditioning coaches all working together, and involving our clients heavily in each step of their program, we deliver outstanding results.

We make it easy for clients to progress into high-quality exercise programs as they recover from their initial injury. Our clients are confident that if they are seeing a new coach or instructor, their previous provider will have told them everything they need to know to make their transition smooth and effective right from the start.

Our exercise physiologists are experts at working around injuries. We regularly get great feedback about how people have thought their gym days were over or how doing solid weights sessions were in their past, but now with the right exercise programming and supervision they are back working hard, hitting PBs and sweating it out just like they used to. We think that’s because of the quality and education level of our team, plus the way our exercise physiologists work side-by-side with our physios so they get to understand injuries right from the acute stage.

This extra knowledge, experience and education enables our exercise team to program higher-level exercises that keep our clients safe and injury-free as they work out and push towards their performance goals, whatever their definition of performance is.