Strains & Sprains

Physiotherapy can help reduce the time of healing of injuries in a variety of ways. Physiotherapy from day one can teach you how to manage and stay as active as possible without making your injury worse. Your physiotherapist will use their ability to assess and diagnose to be able to advise you on when you can safely return to various activities as well as provide hands on treatment, joint and muscle mobilisation, strapping, electrotherapy, acupuncture and exercises to help your injured joints or muscles fully heal and strengthen back to where you were pre-injury.

The Active Health physiotherapists have a wealth of experience and knowledge including in depth post-graduate training in this area.

1. Post graduate Diploma Sports medicine
2. Certificate in Spinal Manual therapy
3. Certificate in Upper limb and Lower limb Manipulation
4. Mckenzie Lumbar,Thoracic & Cervical spinal treatment
5. Working with N.Z Academy of Sport, NPC Rugby, Coast to Coast sportspeople

McKenzie Spinal Treatment

“Robin McKenzie has devoted the whole of his professional life to the study of mechanical disorders of the spine and their treatment. During his lifetime, his contributions to the understanding and treatment of spinal problems have met with worldwide recognition. The validity of the theories he has proposed are now supported with scientific evidence and the effectiveness of his treatments have been scientifically validated.” www.mckenziemdt.org

Low back pain has been shown to affect up to 80% of the population during their lifetime with the problem reoccuring in 70-80% of people in their first year. Robin McKenzie has shown through his lifes work that if we adopt certain postures or perform certain movements, your back can “go out”. However, if you then adopt other postures or perform other movements you can put it back in.

The McKenzie system of assessment enables Physiotherapists to assess what these postures and exercises are and teach patients and therefore put them in control of their back pain. This in turn reduces the patient need to depend on therapists and be able to help themselves.

The McKenzie system is unique in teaching you, the patient, how to manage your back injuries and because of this important and effective treatment difference all our Active Health Physiotherapists are McKenzie Spinal treatment trained.

If you want to learn how to manage your own back long term, contact us to see one of our Physiotherapists for an assessment.

Sports Specific Rehab

Active Health Physiotherapists will always look at rehabilitating you back to your previous, pre-injury sporting level. Our Physiotherapists are skilled in prescribing effective sport specific drills in your rehabilitation to help you safely recover back to full sports participation. These drills take into account all aspects of fitness including cardiovascular fitness, strength, endurance, flexibility, balance, proprioception and agility

We have several skilled experienced Physios who have worked with various sports teams. Some of our physiotherapists are also qualified pilates instructors so Active Health Physiotherapists are qualified and experienced in all aspects of rehabilitation.

If appropriate we can provide sports taping and Active Health also runs pilates classes each week to help with long term core stability and flexibility.

Chronic Injuries

Chronic ongoing pain can sometimes be the result of an underlying injury that has not been diagnosed or treated correctly. With all longstanding pain or functional issues, the Active Health Physiotherapists firstly use our assessment diagnostic skills to ensure that a long term underlying injury has not been missed. This involves a physiotherapy assessment including getting any relevant investigations that are warranted. Active Health has longstanding relationships with specialists who we are happy to refer onto if we feel a second opinion is warranted.

However, sometimes the body has a maladaption to its pain firing patterns and will continue to tell the brain it has pain long after an injury has occured and healed. In these true chronic pain scenarios, a different physiotherapy approach is needed to assist these patients back to better activity levels and teach them how to avoid and manage pain flare ups.

Active Health Physiotherapists in chronic pain emphasize:

1. A Multidisciplinary team approach
2. Functional rehabilitation rather than “hands on” treatment
3. Education on chronicity and gaining patients buy-in and compli ance
4. Cognitive behavioural therapy

Muscle Balance Assessments

For clients wanting to get the most from their training programmes or for patients who have had ongoing or recurrent sports injuries, a muscle balance assessment can identify the true cause of potential problems.

Sometimes recurrent injuries are more likely to occur because of an underlying Muscle Balance issue that causes excess stress to be placed on some tissues that eventually end up injured.

Active Health provides one off Muscle Balance Assessments and programmes that enable individuals to identify these issues to address the real cause of problems and stop the recurrence of injuries.

Identifying areas of weakness or imbalance can enable high performance athletes to improve personal bests by making sure energy is used most effectively during sport rather than wasted on stabilising joints or working against tightness.

Assessments are done by a Senior Physiotherapist and take one hour to complete and a follow up appointment of 40 minutes to instruct the client on the programme.

Our Physiotherapists have found that most muscle balance issues found at an assessment will resolve 90% within 6 months if clients diligently work on the programmes given.

Mobilisation and Manipulation

All Active Health Physiotherapists are trained in joint mobilisation and manipulation.

Joint mobilisation is direct pressure to joints to reduce stiffness of structures, relieve pain and help you regain full normal movement.

Manipulation is a high velocity technique which can be particularly useful in restoring joint movement if lower velocity mobilisation is not effective. A number of our physiotherapists are trained in doing spinal manipulation.

Support & Kinesio Taping

Rigid and elastic sports tape can be used to immobilise, support, facilitate or inhibit function. It can help you function better during your daily life, reduce pain and help you back to sport after an injury.

Active Health Physiotherapists can use taping to reduce pain and enable better and safer activity using rigid or kinesio tape.

If you need frequent taping our Physiotherapists can teach you self taping or provide on the sports day taping before your games.

Acupuncture & Dry needling

Acupuncture is one of the oldest forms of medicine having been used in China for over 2000 years. It is commonly used for assistance with pain management. However, it also is effective at enhancing the rate of healing of injuries by balancing and regulating the neuro-physiolgical system of the body.

We have 20 years experience in using western acupuncture to assist recovery and pain management in musculoskeletal injuries.

Active Health physiotherapists will rarely use acupuncture in isolation from other techniques or advise so you get the most out of your treatment and to maximise the effectiveness of each treatment.

Dry needling and trigger point needling is used to release muscular and connective tissue tension. It is often more effective and less painful than massage.

Post-Surgical Rehabilitation

Over the last 8 years, the Active Health has collaborated with orthopaedic surgeons in Timaru and Canterbury to develop post-operative protocols on shoulder, hip, knee, elbow, wrist and ankle surgery

We have experience in rehabilition of:

Rotator cuff repairs, Shoulder labral tear debridements, Acromioplasties, ACL repairs, Total Knee Replacements, Total Hip Replacements, Hip labral tear debridements, Total Ankle Replacements, Ankle stabilisation, Meniscal surgery, Discectomies, Laminectomies, Total disc replacements, Spinal fusions, Carpal tunnel, Elbow nerve decompression…..

Pilates & Gym Programmes

Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates in the early 20th Century where he helped with rehabilitation of 1st world war soldiers and then later came to work with elite dancers.

Rachael Boyce established Pilates4U 9 years ago. Pilates4U provides pilates classes each week ranging from Introductory to Advanced classes. It is well recognized and utilised world wide for improving core stability and flexibility and research has shown a strong connection with it helping improve recurrent low back pain.

Active Health also utilises weights based programmes, hydrotherapy, Paul Chek’s swiss ball training and sports specific training.

Active Health Physiotherapists and can guide you through appropriate gym based work outs to achieve any health and fitness goals, injury related or not!

Rehabilitation Services

Active Health has been providing Occupational Injury treatment, Workplace assessments, Gradual Return to Work plans, Workplace Education and Manual Handling training since 2003.

Active Health is currently provides workplace injury assessment and management to over 10 local businesses on a regular basis and our Physiotherapists are happy to do one off workplace assessments as required.

What makes us different from other providers in this area is the Active Health Physiotherapists providing this service are only Senior Physiotherapists who have a robust and advanced knowledge of injuries and normal pathology rates of healing, an excellent understanding of what functional level different injuries will allow employees to do, a mature understanding of how to deal with difficult clients and ability to negotiate win win situations for employers and workers. For these reasons, only Rachael Boyce, Lucy Finch & Alex Binney (OT) currently perform workplace assessments and advise on return to work plans.

Contact Us if you would like more information on these services.

Pre-employment Assessments

Pre-employment Assessments are a systematic process of measuring, recording and analysing an individual’s ability to perform purposeful activities in response to broadly defined work demands, activities of daily living or projected vocational status required.