Fit to be Tried: Follow in Derval’s winning footsteps

Posted in Health Quotes by Aidan Cassell on June 30, 2011 No Comments yet

IMAGINE working out and fixing up injuries at the same time, as well as learning to exercise in a way that will make you stronger at your sport.

This is the aim of Sports Med Ireland, a multi-disciplinary team of physiotherapists, strength and conditioning coaches, personal trainers and sports massage therapists with a range of skills they say will help you achieve your fitness goal or recover from injury.

The centre provides sports-specific training programmes designed by a team of experts, many of whom are top-notch athletes themselves.

“We help people from Olympic athletes to those just starting out or returning to regular exercise,” says Ruth Mills, 26, from south Dublin, the woman in charge of helping me to improve my fitness and combat old shoulder and hip injuries at the same time.

These methods are paying off for many. Expect to see the likes of champion hurdler Derval O’Rourke doing squats or gym work under the gimlet eye of one of the Sports Med team.

Other regulars include swimmer Dymphna Morris, a recent silver medalist competitor in the 13th FINA World Masters Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden; Olympic sailors Peter O’Leary, Dave Burrows and Annalise Murphy; and 2012 Olympic hopefuls in the modern pentathlon, Eanna Bailey and Natalya Coyle.

Sports Med says its team helps a diverse range of clients to “achieve their own individual sporting goals, be that Ironman triathlon or completing a first 5km run”.

A signed photograph of Derval leaping a hurdle as high as your chest has pride of place on the wall of the cosy, well set-up premises, tucked away in a Georgian-style house on Dublin’s Kildare Street.

To start out our programme, Ruth, a qualified physiotherapist, weighs and measures me. We then go through a series of squats, lunges and kneeling on all fours and stretching out opposite arm and leg using core muscles for support.

“If we can sort out the way you move during exercise, that will help resolve the injuries,” Ruth says.

For me, the news is pretty good: “You’re fairly fit, but you have some deficits with your deep squat and lunge patterns. The body will adjust itself so that you can still achieve these positions but it will do this through compensatory means.”

Instead of telling me to rest, as many physical therapy experts have suggested, Ruth provides a simple exercise programme designed to address my deficits while keeping me fit.

Tight hamstrings and calf muscles have me wincing in pain, but the pressure is necessary to release the tension, says Gareth. The post-pounding surge of relief and loosened muscles makes it all worth it.

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