Prehab and Protect Yourself – The Performance Matrix

Injury sometimes feels like an inevitable part of sport – in some way shape or form. Whether its annoying niggles, tweaks and strains or a full on muscular or joint issue – to the more serious damage that can occur, no-one wants to spend time out of training and racing because of an injury. Funnily enough a lot of these problems can be prevented; either by better structured training plans to prevent over use and burn out. Or by making sure that the relevant joints and muscles are strengthened to ensure that the body and limbs are properly prepared to deal with the shocks that particular exercises can put put on the body. I’m reminded of this quote/mantra from my father:

“Proper Preparation Prevents P*** Poor Performance”

Having had a relatively serious ankle injury through the winter and struggling to rebuild my running, I went to meet with our partners, The Physio Clinic/The Sports Performance Clinic. The idea of meeting with Matt was to run through their Performance Matrix screening. The screening checks for strength, mobility and control issues via 10 different exercises. From this, Matt could then give me a range of exercises that would strengthen my weak areas.

In the event, I scored 11 out of 50 points, a lower score is better as it highlights fewer weaknesses. I was pretty happy with my score – but it highlighted major weakness around the lower leg and foot. This remained true both for general alignment and co-ordination (low threshold) and for strength and speed (high threshold). On the positive side, my back, hips and shoulders are assets to my sporting performance. Matt has given me 6 exercises to build into the S&C programme that he has written me to work on these weaknesses – especially toward the Europeans!

The Performance Matrix is good tool to anyone looking to get into sport, looking to protect themselves from injury, or looking to improve their results and get the most out of their abilities. It covers all sports as well, not only swim/bike/run; so for high strength/force sports like golf, cricket, netball, basketball and tennis its great for the shoulders – as well as rugby, football for the lower body.

If you are one of our athletes or just interested in having a Performance Matrix Screen and how it can help you, get in contact with us!