Serious and Professional Athletes

We have been treating World Class athletes, for over 20 years. These athletes who have come to see us have been thoroughly fed up with being advised to stop their sport because their “injury“ was not healing. We have de-bunked this nonsense so many times by successfully treating Formula 1 and British touring car racing drivers, World Champion and Olympian Windsurfers, plus hundreds of runners, canoeists, oarsmen and women, hockey players, rugby and football players, track and field athletes, racing cyclists - and a host of others (frankly the sport is irrelevant for us, it is our way of diagnosing that is critical) all of whom have been advised to stop their sport. It has been this disastrous advice that has led all these people to end up seeking our help despite many interventions by physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths which proved valueless.

Why have we been successful? Because Christchurch Injury Diagnostics has one primary goal which is to find out what is actually wrong, before commencing any treatment. Unbelievable as it may seem, this is not generally the case as so many patients testify when visiting our clinics. The general statement from so many patients is that they just received treatment without any really logical explanation of what was wrong and how it came about.

Athletes are frequently misdiagnosed as having had an injury - our experience is that the presence of pain is generally treated as though this signaled an injury. Indeed, this notion is so deeply entrenched in the culture that to question it is to seem to be irrational. But we see that the part that is hurting and preventing the athlete from performing is the result of forces not understood by those applying treatment prior to our involvement. The CAUSE of the symptom is universally ignored or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is simply not of any great interest to the practitioner to discover it - yet it is only when the cause is known that the practitioner is enabled simply to fix it. It is still astounding how many times we encounter this.
So - the athlete, no matter of what age, who has been told that they must REST has been wrongly advised. Rest has never cured any condition in an athlete - whilst we are treating the athlete we IMMEDIATELY get him to go back to the sport and find out how the treatment is working. In this regard we have never been found to be wrong - that is our evidence.

Rest is useless except in the case of the obvious damage to tissue from direct impact or joint strain but even this is often better to treat immediately, usually guaranteeing much faster recovery.

Here is a very typical case history. An 18 year old canoeist competing for the national events had numerous physiotherapy treatments for tennis elbow. Treatment was applied to the elbow -when she consulted an FMM practitioner it was found that the elbow was ok but the neck was not - 2 sessions of neck work removed the so-called tennis elbow!

We use a technique called the Full Movement Method (FMM), details have been enclosed. We are happy to come and talk to you or anybody in your club. We have experience in working on World Class athletes as well as club athletes; the Diagnosis is just the same.

We have two clinics in the Christchurch area, if we can be of any assistance please feel free to call us. We have flexible appointments to suit most people.