Following our recent announcement of adding Physio-led Strength and Conditioning to our services. We thought it would be useful to give you some information on what strength and condition is and how it could help you achieve your fitness and wellbeing goals.

Before we get into the detail, let’s explore exactly what strength and conditioning is, and what it’s not. Strength and Conditioning is the practice of improving the quality of movement and physical output i.e., your strength, power, speed, endurance via specific training programs, to increase your performance and decrease the risk of injury. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not about packing on lots of muscle mass at the expense of moving properly! But what does all of this actually mean?

In simple terms, it means that if you want to improve your performance i.e., reach a goal or reduce your chances of sustaining an injury, then chances are that you will need to improve your ability to move through ranges of movement whilst producing and dealing with various forces – weights. For example, if you’re trying to run a half marathon then you’re probably going to take about 16,000 steps, each one between 1.5 - 3 times your body weight, depending on how fast you are running and that’s not including training! So, improving your strength to weight ratio and that capacity of various muscles is probably going to be important in conserving energy and reducing your injury risk.

Strength and conditioning plays an important role in achieving goals, by building training programs and coaching specific exercises that help improve your movement function under different loads. Loads vary from kilos on a barbell, to how fast you move when you complete them, or a challenging exercise that stresses your co-ordination. Our Strength and Conditioning Physiotherapists will design a program based on the specifics required for you to achieve your goal. Working with you, our Physios will tailor your program to ensure your body is challenged in specific ways, to help create the physiological change required to achieve your goals.

Physio-led Strength and Conditioning has the potential to have a real positive impact on your training program, not just by improving your training practice but by assessing whether you are on track. An essential area of strength and conditioning is testing and monitoring change. This occurs to make sure that your training program is having the impact you wanted it to, but also ensures that you know when you have achieved your goals and helps set new ones. This process of testing and monitoring is crucial in making sure that your training program is progressive, effective, and appropriate.  

So if you are trying to achieve a physical goal then consider how the practice of physio-led strength and conditioning training might improve your movement, capacity, performance, and ultimately help you achieve your goals!

Our strength and conditioning sessions will be available for booking shortly!

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