Soccer and Hockey

This young soccer player demonstrates poor left knee alignment where the left knee turns in over the inside of the foot during a small squatting movement.

Did you know that young girls are up to 8 times more likely to tear their ACL in sport, especially soccer, than boys?

This injury differential is tied largely to poor mechanics of movement.  As a result, it is very important to be address and improve these types of movement patterns preventatively as much as possible.  This will help to limit potential sources of injury in all sports, especially soccer and hockey.

Soccer is one of the fastest growing sports in the Lower Mainland. The physiotherapists at Body Works work to to help support our younger to older athletes to perform their best and minimize injury.

This young soccer player demonstrates improved left knee alignment whereby the left knee can line up properly over the left foot during a squatting motion. AS well, the left hip and body line up well on top of the left knee.

Our experienced Physiotherapists are well trained in assessing mechanics of movement and helping you to learn to retrain your movement patterns before you become injured, or help you to recover after you have been injured.

We are also pleased to offer Preventative Functional Sporting Assessments to look at your whole body and the sport that you play, and provide you with some tools to prevent injury.

The nature of hockey and soccer are very specific:

  • Soccer is an explosive sport requiring fitness, quick feet and footskills, as well as coordination and agility to enable you to cut and pivot on whim.
  • Hockey is a very fast paced dynamic sport with a lot of acceleration, deceleration and directional changes on the ice.  These movements require good movement patterns and strong core stability to prevent injuries, such as groin or abdominal injuries.
This young soccer player learns how to use her core and hip muscles to help maintain improved knee alignment while performing a more challenging balancing task. This is a functional exercise progression.

We look at how your body performs during these sporting demands and where you may be vulnerable to injury.  Specificity of training to sport is crucial.

Once we have determined your movement dysfunctions through a detailed one on one assessment,  we are then are able to help you address these issues through manual therapy, movement retraining and core strengthening and functional exercise progressions.

Dana Ranahan volunteered as team physiotherapist for Haiti’s National Women’s Soccer team when they were here competing in the Olympic Qualifying tournament in Vancouver, BC, Canada in January 2012.  Dana has previous experience working with the Canadian National Women’s Soccer team and the National Youth Development teams in the past and so, she was well suited to volunteer in this capacity.  The pictures below are taken at this event.