Osteopathy for athletes
Osteopathy for athletes, or “sports osteopathy”, is a specialized osteopathic service offered by our osteopathic practice. Although it has long been known that osteopathy can be used as a therapeutic approach for children and adults, it is only in recent years that the osteopathic approach to the treatment of sports injuries has grown significantly.
Osteopathy is perfectly suited to the treatment of sports injuries due to its’ holistic approach in the treatment of the human body, as many sports injuries develop as a result of complex whole body functional impairments and pathological biomechanics or overuse. Therefore osteopathy is an ideal therapeutic adjunct to sports medicine and sports physiotherapy in the treatment of sports injuries.
In our osteopathy practice, we treat both amateur athletes and competitive athletes who make use of our osteopathic services either during injury phases or, even more sensibly, as prophylaxis. Prophylactic treatment for athletes has the potential to reduce the risk of injury and subsequent injury forced lay-offs from training and competition. In contrast to non-athletes, athletes must regularly push beyond their physical limits so that a physiological adaptation to the training stress can take place and therefore improved performance. Due to this increased physical stress, the risk of injury is always very high in athletes.
Due to the long treatment duration in our clinic, thereby allowing us to examine and treat thoroughly, we have the best possible chance to identify and treat many factors contributing to sports injuries, such as muscle imbalances, musculoskeletal restrictions, faulty movement patterns, altered biomechanics or muscle tightening, in good time before an injury occurs. In summary, this means better long-term performance for our athlete patients. Like our osteopathy services for adults, our sports osteopathy approach combines osteopathy with targeted rehabilitative exercises that our patients can do at home as an adjunct to the osteopathic therapy. As soon as our athletes have obtained symptomatic relief, we strongly recommend the commencement of rehabilitation focused Reformer Pilates through our Partners at Pilates am Zoo Düsseldorf with the aim of achieving long-term symptomatic relief, thereby limiting future “flare ups”.
Due to legal regulations, neither specific illnesses can be listed nor a guarantee of symptomatic relief or improvement of your complaints can be made, as this is seen from the legislator as a promise of a cure.