The Omniathlete Blog

Shockwave and EMTT belong to the field of energy-based therapies, together with laser therapy and vibration therapy. Athletes in particular look for needle-free treatment options. Heinz Lohrer from Frankfurt was the first to treat athletes with a focused electromagnetic device during an Olympic Games, in Atlanta in 1996, and Adam Tenforde and Steve Sampson have shown that shockwave is a valid option to improve healing times in in-season athletes.

Hamstring injuries are the most frequent muscle injury in professional football. Over 21 seasons of the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study their share of all injuries doubled, from 12% in 2001/02 to 24% in 2021/22, and between 2014/15 and 2021/22 incidence rose by about 4% per year in matches and about 7% per year in training (Ekstrand et al., 2023). Most of them occur during sprinting or high-speed running, and the usual response in many clubs has been to limit exposure to those a

Sports rehabilitation and performance practice have changed considerably over the past decades, with new measurement technology, a different vocabulary and a larger number of professionals involved in the care of each athlete. This article presents the ideas I consider most useful from that period and the way they shape our work with players in professional baseball.

Plantar fasciitis in athletes is often managed as a local problem of the plantar fascia. The athlete reports heel pain that is worst on the first steps after rest, the diagnosis follows from the history, and treatment is directed at the painful tissue: stretching, soft-tissue work, orthoses, and in some cases an injection. This approach rests on an implicit assumption, namely that the fascia is both the site of the symptom and the origin of the problem.

Shockwave is a plug-in modality with a growing evidence base across a range of treatment types, including Achilles and patellar tendinopathy. It is thought to stimulate healing responses in tendon, bone and muscle, and focused shockwave in particular has been shown experimentally to influence stem cell activity, an important point because satellite cells form the basis of our understanding of muscle repair.

Proximal hamstring tendinopathy is usually explained to athletes in a single sentence: the tendon has been loaded too much. The explanation is incomplete, and its incompleteness matters in practice, because it points towards a single intervention. Reducing running volume changes one input in a condition whose onset appears to depend on several, each of which can be modified independently and none of which compensates for the others.

The word activation has become one of the most frequently used terms in strength and conditioning. It appears on session plans, in warm-up templates, and in the language coaches use with their athletes. Mini-band walks, glute bridges, and a familiar set of low-load drills are prescribed to "activate" a muscle or a region before the main training session begins. The practice is now so widespread that it is rarely questioned.

In most high performance environments the shoe is treated as a piece of clothing rather than as a piece of equipment. The object that mediates the interaction between athlete and ground in every step of every session, however, is usually selected by sponsorship agreement, personal habit or aesthetic preference, and is rarely documented.

In professional football, the relationship between squad availability and competitive outcomes is well documented. Teams that maintain a healthy, available squad through the final stages of a competition consistently give themselves better conditions to perform. High injury burden correlates with underperformance across a season, and the effect is particularly evident during congested fixture periods.

Tendinopathy is among the most persistent and clinically frustrating conditions in athletic practice. It accounts for a disproportionate share of chronic overuse injury, and its management has undergone significant revision over the past decade as the underlying biology has become better understood. While the principles discussed here apply across tendons throughout the body, the Achilles tendon provides the most instructive model.

One of the most important reframes a strength and conditioning coach can make is to stop thinking of plyometrics as a goal and start thinking of them as a tool. Plyometrics are a method — a highly effective one — but the outcome must come first. Before selecting any training modality, the question to answer is: what physiological objective are we pursuing right now, within this block of the periodized program?

The anterior cruciate ligament rupture is one of the most studied injuries in sports medicine. The volume of research produced on ACL rehabilitation, surgical outcomes, and return-to-sport criteria over the past three decades is extraordinary. And yet, ACL re-injury rates remain stubbornly high. This article argues that ACL return to sport is not primarily a structural problem. It is a systems problem.

For more than 120 years, over-the-counter orthotics have been built around a single idea: control excessive pronation by propping up the medial longitudinal arch. The reasoning seemed obvious — if a collapsing arch drives the foot into pronation, then supporting that arch should stop it. The problem is that recent research has quietly dismantled this assumption.

Force plates have become one of the most valuable tools in modern performance environments. What used to be confined to biomechanics labs is now part of daily monitoring in gyms, clinics, and training centres. Coaches and clinicians increasingly rely on objective force‑time data to complement their own judgement—whether they’re tracking neuromuscular readiness, managing return‑to‑play progressions, or simply trying to understand how an athlete produces force and absorbs energ

Tissue flossing — the application of elastic compression bands during active movement — has been a standard tool in athletic training rooms and rehabilitation clinics for over a decade. The evidence base supporting its use for improving range of motion, joint mobility, and movement quality is well-established. What has been less well-defined is why some presentations respond immediately and durably, while others produce only temporary improvement before the restriction return

For more than two decades, core stability has been one of the most widely used concepts in sport science and rehabilitation. It appears in clinical assessments, warm‑ups, physiotherapy prescriptions, and performance programs. It is invoked to explain pain, prevent injury, and enhance athletic performance. Yet the more closely we look at the origins of the idea, the less coherent it becomes.

In clinical practice and high-performance settings, one of the most persistently mismanaged presentations is the athlete who has full passive range of motion but cannot access that range under training demand. Passive straight leg raise looks normal. Ankle dorsiflexion appears adequate on the table. But load a Romanian deadlift, drive into the bottom of a squat, or ask for push-off at sprint velocity — and the restriction reappears immediately.

Turf toe is far more complex than a simple hyperextension injury. While contact mechanisms remain relevant, a substantial proportion of cases arise from modifiable biomechanical factors such as excessive pronation, functional hallux limitus, restricted FHL glide, and insufficient intrinsic foot strength. Effective prevention and rehabilitation require a comprehensive approach that addresses these underlying mechanisms rather than merely treating symptoms.

Given the intense repetitive stress of competition, the wear and tear of chronic pathologies, and the increasing physical demands on young athletes, isometrics in all forms are essential for both development and durability. Far from being "static" in progress, isometric work is a powerful driver for transferring strength into sport-specific dynamic movements.

The use of metronomes is often seen as a means of excessive control in movement and training in general. However, when used strategically, the metronome can acts as a temporal scaffold that stabilises neural control when the system is noisy, injured, or actually relearning. Its value does not lies in dictating how movement should look like, but in supporting when movement unfolds.