Spinal Problems

Back pain, neck pain and headaches are all issues that can significantly impact your quality of life. They can effect your ability to concentrate at work, they can stop you from doing the sports you love or they might restrict your ability to care for, and enjoy time with your kids.

In order to help you it is important to establish a few things.

  1. What structure is creating the pain – which joint/muscle/nerve/disc?
  2. Is there pathology e.g. a disc bulge seen on MRI?
  3. WHY you got that problem.

Often the WHY is ignored. When you know why you have pain then you can treat it. If your MRI report says you have a disc bulge at L4/5 it is telling you what is creating pain, it’s telling you what the pathology is. It doesn’t tell you why you got the disc bulge in the first place.

At Sydney Advanced Physio we take the time to thoroughly assess your body to ensure all contributing factors are identified to help you get the best possible result from treatment. We believe that this first assessment, where we work out what’s going wrong, is extremely important. This is why we spend an hour with you – one on one – when you first come in. A proper, thorough, detailed first assessment lets us help you faster and set up a more effective treatment pathway to help you get the results you want.

Our exceptional hands on and rehabilitation skills mean that we’re equipped to treat a large number spinal conditions ranging from disc issues, thoracic ring issues, cervicogenic headaches, postural problems and neck and spinal pain.

For more information on our back pain services please refer to our Back Pain information.

Muscle problems

There can be lots of things that go wrong with muscles. They can be too tight or too weak. They can be inflamed, painful, torn, strained or in spasm. There can be imbalances in strength or poor strategies in the way you use your muscles when you sit, stand, move and exercise that can all contribute to pain or the feeling that somethings just not right.

When you come in and see one of our physios they will look at the way your move (your biomechanics) to try and help you find out what is going on. Sometimes we use our Real Time Ultrasound machine to look and see what your muscles are doing when you’re trying to turn them on. The importance of retraining the way your muscles activate (the order in which they turn on) is seriously underestimated. If you want to get rid of pain or improve your sporting performance you need to look at the way your muscles work. Our physios can help you get stronger and more flexible, more efficient in the way you move, and help you reduce the likelihood of injury while improving your function.

Our skilled massage therapists are also available to help you prepare for sporting events, improve your recovery time, or to just help you relax tight, aching muscles.

Sports Physio

Working with clients in the sporting population is always fun! Some of our physios are into CrossFit, while some enjoy Pilates. Some of the physios are runners, some are hardcore tennis fanatics – so we all love working with people who are wanting to improve their sports performance, or helping those who are unfortunately struggling with a sports injury.

Each sport, or type of exercise, has a different set of demands and it takes skilled physios to work out where the issues are and to help you reach your goals. If you like to play sport and you want to improve your performance then you need to have adequate strength, flexibility, and good joint control.

Our physios will look at the demands of your sport, assess your body and find ways to improve your sporting performance. We can work with you to try and reach your goals, or we can feedback to your personal trainers or strength and conditioning coaches to try and help you get the most out of each training session.

Running assessments can be useful for identifying technical issues with your running style. Sometimes these technique issues can be because of a lack of strength or control or simply because you need to be given a few cues for how to make yourself more efficient.

Continence

Incontinence is an extremely common but not often talked about problem. Unfortunately, the research shows us that without some help these issues are highly unlikely to resolve on their own.

Research shows that 48% of women will experience incontinence during the last trimester of their first pregnancy. That number goes up to 85% of women in subsequent pregnancies. The research also shows that postnatally 92% of women who are still experiencing incontinence 12 weeks post-delivery will still be experiencing symptoms of incontinence in 5 years without help.

We don’t want to scare you by showing you these statistics but we do want to help you understand that it is extremely important that if you’re struggling with incontinence symptoms, or if you’re planning on or have just had a baby, that you see a women’s health physiotherapist. Women’s health physios are specially trained to help you with issues like incontinence.

If you leak urine when you exercise, or get leaks at any other time, it’s important to see a women’s health physiotherapist. Clinically we see that at least 50% of women are actually pushing down instead of lifting up when they try to do a pelvic floor contraction, so seeing a physio that works with women with pelvic floor issues can be a great idea to make sure you’re doing the right thing.

Women’s health physios can also help find a cause for pain issues. For more information please refer to our Women’s Health information.

Group Exercise & Balance Classes

We run equipment and mat Physio Group Programmes (PGP’s) to meet your needs. PGP’s aim to teach you how to move with good joint and body control, while improving your strength and flexibility.

We also run balance and falls prevention classes in the clinic. The number of participants is limited to a small group as some people are more unsteady than others. We do have parallel bars in the clinic for those who need help with retraining their walking, or to help give you extra confidence when exercising. See our Balance & Falls Prevention page for more information.

Post surgical recovery

We can assist in your recovery from surgeries such as meniscal repairs, knee reconstructions, shoulder surgeries and following joint replacement surgery. Often when patients have broken bones they require physiotherapy afterward (even if they didn’t need surgery) to recover their strength and range on motion so they can return to normal activities.

We understand the huge changes your rib cage and spine are subjected to after chest surgeries like open heart surgery or mastectomies. We can help you recover normal alignment and normal muscle activation and strength. Learning to breathe properly after surgeries like this is extremely important to help manage fatigue, pain, nerve irritation and joint problems. We can’t emphasise enough how important it is to see a physio after any kind of chest surgery.

In some situations it may be appropriate to see a physio before your surgery to help speed up your recovery. Our physios are able to help in this situation too.

Taping

At Sydney Advanced Physiotherapy we can provide you with a taping service (rigid tape or Kinesio tape) to allow you to perform well in your sporting match or before a run.

Kinesio taping helps normalise muscle function. You can use it to help relax a muscle or to help a muscle turn on a little more. It can also help flush out bruising as swelling and help soften hard painful varicose veins. Kinesio taping can also assist with lymphatic drainage following cancer treatment.

Working With Kids & Infants

Sydney Advanced Physiotherapy treats a range of issues seen in children including muscle pain, sports dysfunction, and postural issues.

We do not currently treat for issues related to developmental delay, incontinence, torticollis often seen in infants or young children (ages 6 and below).

Online Consultations

We are now providing Zoom consultations for those who cannot get into the clinic for whatever reason. Please see the  Online Physio Consultations page for more information.