Research has shown that if you have experienced an injury or pain of some description in your neck, back, hips or limbs, and it has not been properly assessed and managed, then you are more likely to re-injure yourself and suffer from recurrent issues for two reasons.

1. Your core muscles (the deepest layer of your tummy muscles and your pelvic floor muscles) which normally work automatically to protect your spine at ALL times, switches off due to an inhibitory reflex mechanism in response to your injury or pain.

The role of these muscles is to brace and stabilise your spine, disc and nervous system. Ultrasound imaging of these muscles verify that they do not turn back on until they are specifically retrained to do so. This means the innate muscular stability mechanism that works to support your back is not doing its job.

Most people have no awareness of this inhibition nor do they know how to correctly re-activate and strengthen these muscles. With time, this inhibition becomes more severe and eventually there will no longer be sufficient support for the spine and pain worsens. Which in turn leads to further inhibition and a vicious cycle continues.

2. Most of us tend to ignore our little niggles and pain in the hope that it will sort itself out, as a result our body stiffens up in certain areas as it develops compensatory strategies in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain and protect the injury. This of course inevitably, over time, causes problems and imbalances elsewhere in your body, which predisposes injuries to occur in these areas. And before long, your whole body is suffers from random pain and stiffness... And all this because we tolerate niggles!

At Le Physique Physiotherapy, we have specifically devised four programmes to address these problems, help you meet your needs and move your body towards greater functional strength, flexibility and fitness.