Unlock expert scientific and practical strategies for muscle injury management – a cornerstone of modern sports medicine – with this course.

The course offers an essential, evidence-informed, and practical approach to effectively manage lower limb muscle injuries, a critical area in sports medicine.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated the negative impact that a high number of injuries can have on individual and team performance. In team sports, most days lost to injury are due to muscle issues. It is critical for a physical therapist working with amateur and professional athletes to properly manage muscle injuries during the different phases of the rehabilitation process and return athletes to sports performance with a low risk of recurrence.

This course will focus on muscle injuries of the lower extremity, with special emphasis on quadriceps, calf, and hamstring injuries. Four aspects will be explored: clinical evaluation, strengthening, load and exercise progression, and criteria for advancing to the next phase (return to run/train/sport).

At the beginning of a rehabilitation journey, assessing the injury from a clinical and functional standpoint is an important starting element for understanding how the injury presents and having a complete view of the clinical picture. Within the course, there will be a theoretical part in which students will be given the tools to master an accurate and detailed assessment.

It will then move on to the practical part, in which they will apply the concepts discussed in the theoretical part. This second part will give students a chance to see practically how to approach an athlete with a muscle injury, before practicing firsthand.

Once the diagnosis and acute phase of the injury have been completed, it will be time to dwell on how to restore muscle function and return the muscle to pre-injury strength levels. Also, for the strengthening part in the gym, there will be an initial theoretical part on the types of exercises and how to plan them during rehabilitation. Specific exercises for different muscle groups and tissues that have been affected will be discussed. After this brief theoretical introduction, there will be a lot of focus on exercise practice, planning, and progressions/regressions

The last phase before return to sport is the on-field rehabilitation. This phase is pivotal for sport-specific assessment of the athlete’s abilities, but it also serves to prepare the athlete for what he or she will need to do on the courts/field once he or she returns to training and eventually playing. This part of the course will focus on scheduling the on-field work using load monitoring tools and how to practically create a rehabilitation session on the field. The theoretical part will present the frameworks found in the literature that will be the basis of the discussion, and then approach the problem with a more personalized aspect for muscle injuries. The practical part will help students create a progression plan in the field to close the gap that exists between the injury period and the return to previous sports activities. Rehabilitation must be based on a progression between the different phases. Knowing when is the appropriate time to progress an athlete from the acute phase to the gym phase, then to rehabilitation on the field to a return to training and performance is very complex. To make this decision, clinicians need to gather information during the rehabilitation process. This course will help the participants to learn about RTS criteria with more scientific evidence, and those that come from the instructor’s expertise from everyday clinical practice with athletes and the regular population. Research on return to train criteria is fairly recent, and the quantity and quality of studies on the topic are continually increasing. The course will help navigate this complex part of rehabilitation and offer practical elements that can easily be used in one’s own settings.

The course aims to present the latest evidence in the management of lower limb muscle injuries and to transfer it to daily practice at all levels: from the amateur sportsman to the elite athlete. The purpose of this course is to develop knowledge and skills on intervention to get every level of athletes back to their sports activities as quickly and with minimal risk of recurrence, but also to learn methods for approaching this sports medicine recurrent family of injuries.