Our Approach

Physioworks philosophy of treatment

The cause of most musculo-skeletal problems is often wear and tear, due to imprecise control of movement and poor control over gravity's effects on us. Poor postural or exercise habits can compound problems. We can be the cause of our own pains.

The body is designed to tolerate control problems, repeated movements or sustained postures to a point, but after it reaches a critical level the rate of wear and tear increases.

Our philosophy is to identify the causative factors, then educate and support the client during the rehabilitation. We put the onus of treatment on to the patient and include them in the decision making process. We refer on immediately if it becomes clear that we are treating beyond our specialties and believe in a team based treatment strategy.

Therapy can be described as active injury management as opposed to the dated concept of passive treatment.

Our treatment is based on postural correction and movement control and our three major tools are education - to give you the motivation to improve, manual therapy - things we do to you to help, and exercise prescription - to enable you to continue to help yourself.

Physiotherapy exercises can be very small, often so small that clients do not equate them with exercises in the fitness industry's understanding of the word. This is because it is the brain's control over the body we are trying to influence so we can change habits that have helped cause the problem. It is easier to break a problem down to it's component parts and change the small things in order to improve the big picture.

What are the limitations of physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy alone often stops when the client no longer requires hands on treatment, but often these people require specific instructions to help them return to full function.

What do Physioworks do between the (pathology) pain stage and exercise?

Early treatment can be electrotherapy, such as ultrasound or low level Laser, or mobilisations, i.e. hands-on treatment. However our mainstay of treatment is exercise prescription. Often these exercises are for small deep muscles that haven't been used for some time and whose tolerance for exercise is small.

'Little and often' home-based exercise regimes are encouraged. These are practiced with the physiotherapist during treatment sessions to fine tune and progress them.