The Right Expert

ANSWER

It seems like you are an active person taking part in
a variety of sports that involve a lot of running, therefore there’s a sense of
repetitiveness involved that can lead towards overuse injuries, especially if
you continue participation with niggly pains. Physiotherapists and biokineticists
work closely together and treatments normally overlap during the rehabilitation
period. One difference between the physio and the biokineticist is that the physio
concentrates on the specific site of the injury, whereas the biokineticist looks
at the cause of the injury and provides rehabilitative exercises.

Say you have been running consistently for the last
year, with no discomfort, and all of a sudden you get a sharp pain in your
right knee during your run. Your knee swells up and weight-bearing causes lots
of pain, so you would immediately consult your physio to help with the
inflammation and to get you pain-free. Now that the injury is better, you need
to correct what was causing the pain.

Your biokineticist then does a biomechanical analysis
of your whole body and picks up that your right foot has no arch (flat-footed
or pronated) compared to your left. Therefore the excessive pronation of the
right foot has created an unstable knee by collapsing inwards during running
and causing damage inside your knee. To correct this you have to do specific
exercises to build up the arch in your foot as well as correcting muscle
imbalances in your legs, thus improving the stability in your ankle and knee,
and keeping you injury-free.