Hawkes Physiotherapy Blog

Basically Iliopsoas syndrome is a collection of conditions relating to the area, which is down to overuse of the Iliopsoas muscle, weakness, disuse, shortening and/or tightness of the Iliopsoas. These issues can give rise to bursitis, tendinopathy, vascular issues and back pain. Firstly you need to know a little about the anatomy of the area. If you take a look at  “The case of the clicky hip (AKA: Snapping hip syndrome)” article this will give you a rundown of the anatomy of the hip: http://mathewhawkesphysiotherapy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-case-of-clicky-hip-aka-snapping-hip.html What causes Iliopsoas Syndrome? It is often caused by repetitive hip flexion in a sport that demands this movement frequently. The excessive use basically causes chronically shortened hip flexors: Iliopsoas syndrome is the result of repetitive active hip flexion in abduction (Laible et al 2013). Other factors include: Performing speed/track work without prope...

When you get injured one of the major issues is muscle wasting. This is obviously caused by lack of exercise and also from pain inhibition. The evidence shows pain has an inhibitory effect on muscle activity. Particularly around the knee the activity of the Vastus Medialis Oblique (VMO) is inhibited severely. So how much of a problem is muscle wasting? Muscle strength is found to decrease by between 2% to 6% in the first 8 days of immobilisation (Muller,1970). After 2 weeks of not training significant reductions in fitness can be measured & improvements can be lost in months (Kisner & Colby 1996). Muscle is inhibited when pain is around; this is due to the nerve not firing correctly. This is very significant as to why NMES is effective. In NMES the impulse is sent directly to the muscle making it contract therefore bypassing this issue. So what exactly is NMES? Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) is basically an electrotherapy modality th...

If you've had physio before it’s quite likely that you will have encountered therapeutic ultrasound. It’s the machine with the gel on the end. People sometimes say “Am I pregnant then?”. Well Ultrasound can be used for imaging too, but not the machine used by physiotherapists for treatment of injuries. So there is diagnostic ultrasound and there is therapeutic ultrasound. So what exactly is it? Therapeutic ultrasound has been used in clinical practice since the 1950’s and during this time its popularity has fluctuated but it has always remained the most utilised electrotherapy modality in physiotherapy. So basically it is a small machine that generates sound waves that are at high frequency. It is higher than what can be heard by the human ear, hence the name ‘Ultra’ sound. We can hear from 16Hz to 20,000 Hz in children and young adults, as we get older we can’t hear the higher frequencies (Hz is the frequency per second). But ultrasound is used at either 1MHz or 3...