Hawkes Physiotherapy Blog

What is muscle flexibility? Flexibility is defined as the ability to move body joints through a full range of motion. So muscle flexibility contributes to this overall flexibility as muscle is responsible for the movement of the joints. Primarily the ligaments limit excessive movement at our joints but muscle plays its part especially is 2 joint muscles! Think about it, can you touch your toes? What is the most likely limiting factor? Hamstrings? So overall muscle flexibility is the ability of the muscle to lengthen to an appropriate length for specific activities. What do I need muscle flexibility for? If muscles are too short for the movements that you use and need, then it will lead to decreased performance, abnormal movement and injury (either cumulative or in a one off event). How do I know if I need to improve my muscle flexibility? Everybody is different. It’s not a one size fits all. Ideally you need to be screened for your sport as each sport and each pe...

What is muscle injury? Injury can be acute, which can be either direct or indirect: Direct injuries are from an external force at the point of contact, e.g. a player receiving a bruise within a muscle after being struck during a game. Indirect injuries usually involve the athlete themselves damaging the soft tissues in the body through internal or external forces. An example of this can be a hamstring strain while sprinting in the 100 metres or even a hamstring strain when lifting a weight. Chronic injury:  Long standing and not healing quickly or well. Repetitive Strain:  Overuse injury that is sustained from repetitive stress, incorrect technique or equipment, or too much training, which causes cumulative strain to the structure that builds up to an injury state. Static Strain: a one off load that overloads the muscle and it tears Postural Strain: This is an overuse injury that is sustained from continuous stress from a certain position/posture, whi...

This is the first article in the series of muscle related topics. This article will give an introduction to muscle and further topics in the future will cover things like delayed onset muscle soreness, injury, flexibility etc. So stay tuned. Definition of muscle: A tissue composed of fibres capable of contracting to effect bodily movement. A contractile organ consisting of a special bundle of muscle tissue, which moves a particular bone, part, or substance of the body. How much muscle is there in our bodies? Obviously this will vary but generally muscles constitute to on average 40-50% of total body weight! (Tortora & Grabowski, 2000) There are different types of muscle in the body, we will briefly talk about cardiac and smooth muscle just so you know a little about them but as I am a physiotherapist I will concentrate on skeletal muscle. Cardiac muscle: This is the muscle that forms the heart. This muscle is striated and its action is involunta...

What is shoulder impingement syndrome? Shoulder impingement syndrome is when there is reduced clearance between the humeral tuberosities and the coracoacromial arch during elevation, which pinches the intervening soft tissues. The vulnerable soft tissues are the subacromial or subdeltoid bursa, the rotator cuff tendons and the long head of biceps. (CSP guidelines)  Classification: Primary Secondary Internal Glenoid Impingement Anatomy of the shoulder: Before we discuss the above classifications further, you need to know a bit about the anatomy of the shoulder: Bone: Scapula: Clavicle: Humerus: Joints: Glenohumeral joint: Scapula (glenoid) and humerus Sheroidal Shallow glenoid Large head of humerus Labrum around glenoid Closed packed position: full abduction and external rotation Capsular pattern: ER >ABD>IR>Flex Very mobile and unstable Sternoclavicular joint: Sternum to clavicle Saddle joi...