McEntee Physio & Performance Centre

Banded Tibial Inversion 🦶

Banded tibial inversion is a simple way to introduce targeted resistance and build strength through the foot and ankle.

Benefits:
• 🎯 Targets the tibialis posterior and medial ankle musculature
•💪🏻 Builds inversion strength and control
• 🦶 Supports dynamic arch control
• ⚖️ Helps develop foot/ankle stability
•🏃Key as part of a progressive rehab plan

Key tip: Keep the movement controlled and reduce any knee movement

🎯Single leg press

📊The single leg press is a unilateral lower limb strength exercise we use in rehabilitation and performance-based strength training, primarily working the quads and the glutes.

📍We commonly use it in the early part of mid-stage rehabilitation, particularly with those post ACLR, to bridge the gap between the isolated early-stage strength work and more demanding plyometric and field-based tasks.

👉It’s important to:
-Push through the midfoot
-Allow the knee to translate over the toes
-Control the descent
-Progress load as able

🎯Split Squat Variation

📍This Bulgarian spilt squat variation includes a partial rep which increases the amount of time the quad muscles are under strain for.

👉This helps to create a greater stimulus to encourage an increase in muscle strength and size.

⚡It can be useful to help overcome a plateau in quad strength or to rebuild quad muscle mass following injury.

🎯Band resisted SLR

📍The seated SLR with band resistance is a simple way of progressively loading the re**us femoris through hip flexion in a knee extension position. The band provides a controlled, externally resisted hip-flexion task.

👉It can be particularly useful in the early–mid stages of re**us femoris rehabilitation, building capacity and tolerance before progressing towards more demanding, lengthened and higher speed tasks.

📊It’s important to:
-Sit tall with back supported
-Keep the knee fully extended
-Control both the lift and the return
-Progressively overload the movement starting with nobody weight and progressing to band resistance

🎯Improving shoulder external rotation function isn't just about building stronger muscles, it's about improving how your shoulder moves and functions overhead.

📊Better external rotation function can be a big cogwheel in overall shoulder mechanics, reduce unnecessary stress on the surrounding structures, and make overhead movements feel smoother and more efficient.

📍Mobility isn't just about how far a joint can move, it's about how much of that movement you can control. The thoracic spine & shoulder blade are two other big contributors when it comes to efficient overhead movement.

🎯Knee Extension - Re**us Femoris Bias

📍The re**us femoris is one of the quad muscles, it crosses both the hip and knee joints and is commonly injured during sprinting and kicking.

📊When rehabbing a re**us femoris strain it's important to ensure that our exercise selection is specific to the re**us femoris to cause adaptation and increase strength. We have delved into this area in a great degree of detail in recent weeks around the publication of the Aspetar Re**us Femoris Pathway which has had a heavy influence from there Irish physio contingent there.

👉Reclining the seat or sitting in a reclined position on the knee extension as shown lengthens the re**us femoris muscle and therefore biases it compared to the other quad muscles.

🎯Hamstring Rehab:

📊Developing strength into trunk flexion with rotation to the same side can help to build strength in a movement/position which can typically be vulnerable (a common mechanism of injury for some big hamstring injuries).

📍Within our rehab journey we want to create robust athletes and expose the body to a variety of positions and demands that reflect what needs to be done on the pitch (eg a forced tackle from behind when in an outstretched sprinting position).

⚡One can progress this exercise by adding more of a reactive element with an increase in speed.

🎯Cable / banded long lever hip flexion

📍This long lever hip flexion exercise with the knee in extension is an important exercise outlined in the Aspetar Re**us Femoris Injury Rehabilitation Pathway management framework.

📊The re**us femoris muscle crosses both the hip and knee joint. Compound lifts such as the squat pattern don’t preferentially bias the re**us femorus muscle. This exercise specifically targets the re**us femoris muscle and prepares tissue for a return to kicking and sprinting, where it is most commonly injured and re-injured.

👉This is a progression from the short lever variation outlined in the pathway. The longer lever and maintaining the knee in full extension as the hip flexes increase re**us femoris demand and increases hip flexion torque.

🔴It’s important to:
-Keep the knee locked in extension
-Maintain an upright trunk position avoiding lumbar extension / anterior pelvic tilt
-Ensure movement comes from the hip
-Slow and controlled lowering

⚡Hopping isn't just about being explosive, it's equally as important that we learn to absorb force effectively (as is necessary with every running stride).

👉Our main focus:
- get low & land quietly

🎯Eccentric Hamstring Bridge

📍With hamstring injuries being very common in sports requiring high speed running, it is important to train them to become more resilient.

📊Eccentric exercises are movements where the muscle is lengthening under load. This form of exercise increases muscle strength & enhances tendon resilience. Building strength in this way helps muscle tendon units to cope with these movements more effectively, which we believe will assist with reducing injury risk