Today consisted of three locations; Newton Abbot Office (3 hours), Shaldon Primary School (1.5 hours) and Ashburton Regional Training (3.5 hours).

Office

Today I created a video regarding K-Tape with information on what the tape is with a video of applying K-Tape to heels (Heel pain k-tape information ).This will be used to send to parents of athletes who are suffering with the same heel pain due to growth in the hope for giving them some understanding of what K-Tape is and how it helps aid the recovery of an injury.

I then went through some emails with parents in regards to injuries that their children have and what advice I could give them. It was mainly growing pains so I advised to allow their children to continue playing football only if it is not causing the pain to reoccur. I also suggested to try heat and ice modalities to help ease pain where necessary.

Today I also created an MCL rehab plan for a player that was partially weight bearing last week to help strengthen the surrounding muscles ( MCL Rehab Plan )I will be discussing and demonstrating these exercises later at regional training session as well as assessing the player checking his ROM- active and resisted.

Shaldon Primary School

Today I was with the year 1 pupils in an after school club assisting coaching with another coach. We had prior discussed what the plan was today and we were focussing on Skills. We set up a ‘Traffic Light’ system with a race track and the kids learnt how to dribble the ball around a track along with a shooting drill and skills.

Today went really well, every child joined in and enjoyed themselves. At the end we had some time to do a mini fun cool down game by using the same exercises as a normal cool down however adapted them so they could understand how to perform these exercises correctly. We then needed to ensure that we had a staggered pick up times due to Covid situation and ensuring the parents were not all congregating at the gates waiting for the children to finish.

Whilst being at primary schools, we need to be aware to wear face masks when close contact, we also need to ensure that each age groups are kept separately as they are in their own ‘bubbles’, this helps reducing the risk of infection from the virus.

Ashburton Region Training

Today I had two athletes from the U10’s team both c/o heel pain. I discussed with both parents discovering that they have both recently had growth spurts which shows the clinical impression of severs disease (mild). ROM in both were not limited however their calf muscles were very tight. I suggested that I go through some stretches with them which they can do before and after training sessions/match days to relieve the tension in their calves. I then applied K-Tape to both heels on both athletes as they both have seen this tape help other athletes with similar issues.

I then had an injury near the end of the training session due to ankle instability. They had limited ROM in eversion when comparing to their non-injured side. Due to this I performed grade 2-3 mobilisations in Ankle eversion to help reduce the pain and increase the ROM in their ankle. I then applied k-tape to help give support whilst finishing the last 15 minutes of their training session.

At the end I went through stretches for teams U10’s, U14’s and U15’s due to the coaches asking if I could. I made sure to suggest to the U10’s coach that they would need to stretch due to a few of them struggling with growing pains and needing a good stretch after training.

Next time I would like to create a leaflet or information sheet for all parents so they understand what stretches their children can do, what exercises they could do in order to aid strength and prevent injuries, and also to give further information about common injuries for each age group.