Join me in conversation with Shoban Rahulapaskaran, co-founder of Physio Circle. Its all about football specific injuries in this episode.
Shoban shares the most common football injuries and why it occurs. We also touched on the connection between the surfaces of pitches and football injuries and the research is pretty surprising. It is an aspect of the game though that has a profound impact on players' performance and risk of sustaining major injuries.
We also shed light on the recovery journey of a player, pointing out the conflicts that may arise when the pressure from coaches clashes with the recommended recovery period. It's a compelling conversation that opens your eyes to the intricacies of player protection and club priorities.
Wrapping up our discussion, we highlight the importance of personalized care for players, emphasizing the role of education in injury prevention. We navigate through the crucial elements of a warm-up and the role of activation drills in game preparation. Shoban speaks to the challenges of motivating players through their rehabilitation, offering his insights into the physical and mental requirements of the recovery journey.
Join me in conversation with Shoban Rahulapaskaran, co-founder of Physio Circle. Its all about football specific injuries in this episode.
Shoban shares the most common football injuries and why it occurs. We also touched on the connection between the surfaces of pitches and football injuries and the research is pretty surprising. It is an aspect of the game though that has a profound impact on players' performance and risk of sustaining major injuries.
We also shed light on the recovery journey of a player, pointing out the conflicts that may arise when the pressure from coaches clashes with the recommended recovery period. It's a compelling conversation that opens your eyes to the intricacies of player protection and club priorities.
Wrapping up our discussion, we highlight the importance of personalized care for players, emphasizing the role of education in injury prevention. We navigate through the crucial elements of a warm-up and the role of activation drills in game preparation. Shoban speaks to the challenges of motivating players through their rehabilitation, offering his insights into the physical and mental requirements of the recovery journey.
This is the Silver Fox Hustle Football Talk. Hi, this is the latest episode of Football Talk with the Silver Fox Hustle podcast. I'm Shasi, and don't forget, click on the follow and subscribe button on the various platforms that you are listening to this podcast on Now today. It's an interesting episode because we're going to talk about injuries, football injuries, football specific injuries and, you know, along the way, we are also going to talk about rehab. We're also going to talk about, maybe, prevention, or whether is there a way to prevent injuries in the first place, and also the connection between the surface of pitches and injuries, of whether there's any connection. And you know, here to talk about all that is the co-founder of PhysioCircle. He's also the physiotherapist there, mr Shoban Rahula Basgurun. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. How's it?
Speaker 1:going. It's good, I've been good keeping busy myself, but can you please tell me how did you get into physiotherapy?
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a good story. It's probably not going to be what the answer everyone expects. I'm from UK, growing up in London, so we similar system. We have GCSE kind of O-Levels at 16, then you choose your A-Level subjects or whatever it is here, and then you apply to uni. During that time, you know, I think, every Tamil, indian, paran or Sri Lankan they want you to do medicine right.
Speaker 2:Yeah that was not for me. Number one my grades probably definitely not good enough for it, and then number two is just not for me. So at that point I'm no idea what I want to do. I think sometimes about unfair at 17, 18 to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life and then the way it is in the UK just get any degree you do relatively well in it, then you can go into postgrad, whatever you want to do postgrad, med.
Speaker 2:You want to go teaching, banks will take you and put you in a graduate scheme. So I was like, okay, let's just pick a degree.
Speaker 1:Physio was my choice. Let's pick a degree.
Speaker 2:Just pick a degree and go with it and physio was my choice because it was free.
Speaker 1:It's a free degree and I thought, okay, I'm no burden. How does this?
Speaker 2:work Free degree. So not enough physios in the UK at that point, really so like not enough physios, not enough nurses, not enough occupational therapists, radiographers, all these kind of allied health professions, not enough. We've got massive shortage. So to attract local kind of students or like British students, they just made it a free degree and I was like, great, okay, no student loans, you're going to give me a bit of money as well to study from the NHS. This is great. Maybe I'll enjoy it, maybe I'll end up doing this as a career.
Speaker 2:Halfway through the degree there's like NHS cuts. So it's a few years after all that financial crisis. So then all the jobs are halved or cut by 80%. So you've got all these students on a free degree, but there's no jobs for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, that's how I ended up in physio. I just needed a degree.
Speaker 1:Right, right. And how did you get to Singapore, by the way?
Speaker 2:So in my final year the Singapore government actually came, or Singapore Ministry of Health, whoever came to uni. They set up like a recruitment day Okay, talk about Singapore, boss is great, come live here, come work here. So I took it as just interview practice and just get some practice under my belt, got an offer and then they put me in Changi. So I was like, okay, you're giving me a job for at least three years, you're paying for my flight, you're giving me a bit of housing allowance.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, I can't even get a job in London at the moment. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, and never looked back since I mean it was meant to be go back after a year. But then I met my wife and I would have met my girlfriend, who's now my wife. Now, I know it's 11 years now, beautiful man.
Speaker 1:Now let's get into physio circle first, right Before we talk about you know specific football stuff. You're the co-founder and how did this begin? You know physio circle itself.
Speaker 2:I mean it started in lockdown, yeah so the idea came about in lockdown.
Speaker 2:So prior to that I've been. I mean just quick summary. I was in Changi for a few years. Then the physio who I kind of looked up to she moved into private. So she asked me do I want to come with her? So I followed her into private there for a few years. She moved off to Australia so then I started running that clinic for my boss as just the manager there, moved on to another clinic where I was the director so helped set up a couple of clinics there as well, and I set up one and then look after another, and then during COVID I was like I've been doing this for other people.
Speaker 1:Maybe I should be your own boss, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, try and, as in when you do stuff for other people, you always still limit it a little bit. You can't put all your ideas into place. So my wife said so if you're complaining and the only person, just do your own thing. Yeah so just put some ideas to paper and three years later you're here, brilliant man.
Speaker 1:Brilliant Now, because I was looking through the website and you guys do physiotherapy, rehab, strength and conditioning, sports massage as well, and there's something interesting that got my eyes the mindful mobility part. You know the yoga and the mobility flow right, yeah, home therapy and stuff. So how does this work? It's very interesting, the more the mindful mobility thing.
Speaker 2:So I mean that's run by our yoga teacher, angie, who works for us as well, so she runs a few classes a week in the clinic. So I mean the reason why we wanted stuff like this. We also have pilates, we also have pitch rehab as well and stuff like that. We wanted to add different things that will be adjuncts to your rehab.
Speaker 2:Okay, and we also have strength and conditioning, just to keep you away from coming back to the physio. The idea is, let's equip you with the skills we get you better, educate you, then put you into a pathway whether you need to get stronger, whether it's more kind of mindfulness or kind of yoga or pilates, or you need more stuff on the pitch. There's just different streams for you to go into and then build you up so that you don't come back to us a few weeks later or a few months later. Yeah, Beautiful.
Speaker 1:I think the education part is important as well. I think you're right. When you play us, they get injured, they come in and they just stick to a normal rehab program, if you like, right. And then there's the other things to compliment that as well, and I think this mindful mobility thing comes into play as well. It's brilliant. Now you guys are linked with Haogang United as well. How did that? How's this arrangement like? Or is it a contract basis or what is it like?
Speaker 2:Just going into the background of it, community is a huge thing for us. So our first clinic is in Serangoon. I live in Punggol.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So you know northeast right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, and then, at the same time, we love football, yeah, but we weren't in the local scene, we weren't well-versed with the local scene.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, she asked me three years ago. I'd probably be able to name you a few players only, yeah. So then one or two of the coaches at Haogang the fitness coach, the sports trainers we knew already just from the kind of health and fitness scene is small and they reached out to us and said hey, would you guys be interested in working with Haogang? Yeah, and from there we took on a kind of a sponsorship deal where the players, if they get injured, they come in for treatment. We have, et cetera, we provide our physio services there. We're running for about three years. We've done two years, we've got another year left.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hopefully carries on for a lot longer. How's that been? It's great, it's good.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's good for us. I mean from there's two point of views that we wanted. We wanted a business point of view, and then a professional point of view, for the staff as well.
Speaker 2:So from a business point of view, it's great because lots of awareness about us now people pick up football injuries. They a lot of people have said, oh, I've seen you guys at Haogang Physios or seen your name up on the board or the players have spoken about you Nice, and we've got a lot more people coming and that's helped us to establish the kind of us as the place to go for football injuries, whether you're an amateur player or you're a kid, or where you're a professional player who needs an outlet or something, etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 2:From a professional point of view, we wanted our staff, including me, to have exposure to work with athletes at a high level to be under pressure to get players back to playing fast or whatever, not. And it's been great because clinically we've all grown, we've had the ability to go on tour with them. Last year, asc this year, oh nice. One of my colleagues, daniel, went for the Sabah game last week.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And he's given us exposure as well and helped us grow as physios Brilliant brilliant.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk football and injuries. Now, what are the most common football injuries based on research? Let's talk about the experience part.
Speaker 2:You know the past two years with Haogang From experience the most common football injuries that you guys are always treating or facing- yeah, I mean I'd say just looking back at the Haogang and the men's and women's the last couple of years easily muscular strains and then easily rolled ankles, those are the various. So muscle strains are simple stuff like a hamstring or a quad strain.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Not so much a calf strain, very rare. And then very common, I mean, I'd say every couple of months we have a rolled ankle or a bad landing and you twist your ankle, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Those are the common ones, especially the muscular ones, right the quarts, the hamstrings especially, and then you know the groin injuries as well. So, those are very really common, based on research.
Speaker 2:It's the same, yeah, I'd say it matches up the same. I'd say the muscle strains, like you said, quarts, hamstring, groin I'd say hamstring and groin more for footballers, definitely those are the two and if you look back and if I open up my files, those are probably the two that I've popped up the most in terms of muscle injuries. We've had a few quad ones from, just, you know, shooting the ball or overextending, etc. And then, yeah, easily you know, eight to ten rolled ankles, from minor injuries to longer ones.
Speaker 1:Obviously, you guys are with Haogang. So you are there, you know, and every single day, almost every single day, with the players and you know what's all about. In terms of the football part, right, and obviously you do take in people from all walks of life, athletes from different sports and whatever. What are the differences in terms of injury-wise, right, you know? Take, for example, football and maybe basketball player, right, is there like distinct differences in terms of injury sustain? Or obviously the hands and the feet are the two different, you know, yeah definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you look at basketball, probably a lot more kind of finger fractures, hyper extension injuries. You know you're shooting the ball a lot more, so you might get some rotator cuff shoulder issues. But if you look at the legs, for both those sports I mean, basketball meant to be non-contact, but is it really? Is it really?
Speaker 1:Is it really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean you still see a lot of rolled ankles you still see a lot of ACLs, a lot of Achilles injuries in both sports as well. So I mean, in terms of low-limb injuries, I'd say both similar types of injuries. Definitely, maybe you might get a bit more Achilles in basketball compared to football, but I mean, there's a lot of NBA players and professional players with ACL injuries just from poor landing or etc.
Speaker 1:You know you're right, right, and I'm just looking at then. I'm watching basketball. I don't play it and I watched the game right. In terms of the lower limb injuries, I think they are more dangerous playing basketball. You know the fact that I think intensity wise as well, because they always back and forth, back and forth in a very short space and the timing as well. You got to go back and forth and the twisting and turning, the checking and going, because you're doing it almost every other you know.
Speaker 2:It's like 5-10 seconds, suddenly a change in direction.
Speaker 1:Because for footballers you can hide sometimes because it's a bigger pitch, and then the ball is on over 30-40 meters away. You're still resting.
Speaker 2:You got to breathe it.
Speaker 1:I think basketball is, you know, the the possibility of you getting injured, in terms of a roll ankle, a twisted knee, especially.
Speaker 2:it's more isn't it Actually? Basketball was my main sport at school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, I used to play five, six times a week Any injuries. My ankles are all right now.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've any ligaments left.
Speaker 1:Wow, my ankles.
Speaker 2:But you're right, yeah, I mean, that's why basketball has rolling subs, right? Otherwise, I think there'll be a lot more injuries.
Speaker 1:No, you know you talk about ankle injuries and stuff. Right, we go through the specific ones, like the hamstring injuries, for example. Right, is there anything that is worst off in the SPL here in Singapore? Maybe the ACL, obviously right, but what have you seen like the worst so far in the two years that you've been with Haogang?
Speaker 2:I mean this year we've had some bad injuries this year. I mean Kiki's broken wrist earlier in the season and is dislocating his elbow. I mean, we've had some accidents that we can't prevent. Yeah, because it's contact or you've landed droolily and stuff. I mean last season, fortunately, we haven't had any ACLs like fresh ACLs in the time I've been here I mean Andre Moritz and AFC. Last year he had a kind of a sprain of the ACL. We thought it was a lot worse.
Speaker 1:In Drucky before that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Drucky was before my outside, but we did this rehab for over the last couple of years. Shao-wa had a bad ankle injury last year in Tobio Not gonna say anything about Tobio bitch.
Speaker 1:No, just say it, man. It's terrible. I will say it so I mean fortunately we haven't had awful injuries.
Speaker 2:We've seen some crazy. I mean we've seen some stuff, but it's manageable stuff Okay this outside of football, right?
Speaker 1:You've been a physiotherapist for some time now. What's the worst you've seen?
Speaker 2:Worst injury you've seen, I had one guy once and this always comes to me straight away he was a case referred over to the clinic when I was first in private. It was a home therapy case, so I had to see him almost daily because he couldn't come to the clinic. So basically he was driving in India and the road signs had not been put up and they had dug the road out or something. So there's like a big ditch kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And he had just driven into that. The steering wheel had then almost collapsed into his thigh, his femur, and smashed the femur into like multiple pieces.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then he just can't walk, can't bend his knee. So much pain. And we did one or two.
Speaker 1:So this is after the op.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that surgery in India, come over back here. And he said, looked at the, you know something's not right. He said maybe it's good to just get a review from a doctor here and just surgery had not been done well, so he had to go in for another eight to 10 hour procedure. What I mean? It took a long time to even get him back to walking. That's the worst I've seen. That's what I would not want to see again in terms of musculoskeletal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great sec because we talk about rehab right Now. Tell us at Physiocircle, specifically, right From the time a player gets injured for example, he gets a muscle tear in the hamstring right From the point that he gets injured until the point that he's cleared to play what goes through. You know at Physiocircle and the phases, you know how this works.
Speaker 2:So this back as in one of the Haogang players. Yeah okay, so we are not there. Most training Okay. We have Thomas, the sports trainer we have Sation and other physios there. So they pick up an injury. It's the assessancy. Whether do they need a doctor's assessment to see how bad it is, or if it's a minor injury, they get sent over to us and then they come into the clinic.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's when we'll do a more in-depth assessment, come up with a rehab plan, update the health medical department at Haogang and the coaches to know how long they're out for. What's the expected time recovery when they can come back to training.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And it could be, for example, hamstring strain, acute management. First work on reducing pain, improving the range of motion, mobility again, getting them used to walking. Move on to the next phase, which is probably strength building, building up the strength difference. Again, we will assess the strength to see how much weaker is it.
Speaker 2:Of course, if it's a grade one or grade two injury, we know how long tissues take to heal. So based on that, based on the clinical outcomes as well, once the strength is back, we move on to the return to sports phase, and that's on the pitch rehab. So we're very lucky that we use the cage at Kallang who've given us that place to do the return to sports rehab, work on football drills, work on acceleration, deceleration, change of direction. And when we're confident that they're doing it in an environment, that they feel confident and safe, secure, then we'll let them go back into progressive training.
Speaker 2:So that could be non-contact training first to then maybe training with a bib on, so that no one they can play the kind of games, but no one will tackle A pink bib, maybe that yeah, a pink or white bib, whatever, so they don't get tackled, and then progressively into full training, and then there'll be a return to kind of match testing done by the S&C specialists at Hockong and if all that's clear, they'll go back into full games.
Speaker 1:That's nice and tell us a little bit about the grades of, for example, hamstring, again right. So for the people at home who's watching this as well, what tell us the difference in the grade test I?
Speaker 2:mean think about it as three grades. Maybe partial is like up to 25%, player up for one to two weeks. Maybe the grade two is like much higher 50%, 60%, etc. That could be anywhere from four to six weeks, six to weeks weeks, and then a complete rupture will take. I think about months.
Speaker 1:What I like about you guys is also the part where you have this arrangement with the cage, for example, to do the field training as you come back, slowly, come back into it. That's great right, because it gives you an opportunity to actually then assess them away from the team. That's training sometimes and that's important as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it builds up that confidence for the players as well, that there isn't anyone looking at me. I can spend my time working on it. But it's also great for the amateur player. For example, imagine you've torn your quads, you torn your hamstrings, whatever A few months out. What we don't want is you just do the rehab in the clinic.
Speaker 2:You'd pass some sports test and say okay go back to play, but you have not graded them back to the sport. You have not graded them back to football. You haven't worked on the change of direction or the ball work etc. And there are some times when we see these amateur guys on the pitch then we realize, oh actually the stability is off, their balance is off, they're very fearful to load that leg. Then we bring them back to the clinic, work on that and it helps just reduce that re-injury rate and it's been good for the whole spectrum.
Speaker 1:That's important. But I just want to ask you something that just came to my mind Psychologically, how important is it for a player who's injured, especially those long-term ones, for example, an ACL right to be away from the environment where the players are actually playing? Because I read this somewhere I think it was, you know, arsene Van Gogh or something like that he didn't want his players to be in the vicinity of all the other players when they are, you know, playing and tackling and all, and psychologically he hurts you, sometimes the players, because there are my teammates playing and I'm here, I can't even walk properly, right? So how important that plays in the rehab of a player.
Speaker 2:I think psychology is super important.
Speaker 2:I mean someone who has had an ACL rehab. I mean a long time out. If you're not mentally right, if you're not ready to make that tackle or make that play etc. And you're overthinking, you are thinking too much about the body and not the game, your energy is being put into the wrong place and the ability to pick up an injury is much higher. At the same time, I can imagine the flip side. If you've been away from the team for a long time, psychologically that's very down. So as soon as they can get some more work, some pitch work, it's kind of nice to go back to the training and do the work there.
Speaker 2:The other team sees you as well that you're coming back.
Speaker 1:Good point, yeah, so there's both ways. Good point. This is a question that I'll just get straight into it. Have you had any pressure from coaches to say maybe you've given the player three weeks and the coach comes to you and says two weeks, we need him back by two weeks, get him done by two weeks, get him fixed by two weeks. How do you have you had that? Or if you had you have that in the future, how would you react to this?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think at Haogun we actually haven't. So we've worked for three who I think are great guys Clemence, fidaros, marco and I'd love to work for any of these guys again Reason being they are super respectful of the medical department, they take the time to come and understand what's going on with the player as well, and if we say we can't, he needs a bit longer, and they're like, okay, of course, of course they were like I mean, if you can, that'd be great, but at the same time if you say no, they understand.
Speaker 2:They don't want to get someone injured and be out for a long time. I mean, I've heard of other places where maybe I'm not going to mention names and stuff. But yeah, where the pressure has been on, and said you know you need to get them back ASAP.
Speaker 1:Now let's put you in a spot. Let's say you move on to and it's not only in Singapore. Let's say you go elsewhere, anyway, right, and you get a pressure like this, how would you react to like?
Speaker 2:I think we're in a difficult situation because you need to think of the club, but naturally, as a healthcare professional, your priorities can be a player and I will always lean towards the protection of the player as well so if that means me taking on more heat.
Speaker 2:I'd rather take the heat, protect the player, get them back instead of pushing them and they get re-injured again, because that's more heat on both of us after that anyway. But I think it's laying down expectations and understanding as well. If I'm new to a club and say, if we're not at Hau Kang, say we're in another club in the next year or next two years, I would want to get to know the coach a lot better and then for them to understand how we do things and what we do things, I think, even before the contract is signed.
Speaker 1:I think that's important, right, when you speak about all these things and get it out of the way. You want to understand the culture, right?
Speaker 2:So if they understand that, look, we're not going to push the player, but if the ability is there to push, we will push. And we'll be honest. We push the players more than the amateur player do, and they want to be pushed as well. Players. I've never worked with a player that wants to take it easy so far anyway.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about pictures in general. It's a major topic here in Singapore and even if you go elsewhere, is this thing, where it's the artificial pictures versus natural grass debate, right? Firstly, what does the research tell you? I'm sure you've gone to researchers and what not at. What does the research tell us in terms of the different kinds of pictures with respect to injuries sustained by football players?
Speaker 2:I mean it's mixed and there's some articles that will say you play an artificial pitch and you pick up more injuries. And there's some research that shows less injuries.
Speaker 2:I mean every article has its limitation and I think there is a big review that's probably one of the biggest that's been done, looking into all of the studies over the last whatever 10, 15 years and removing studies that were poor, keeping studies that are similar together, and they found that artificial pitchers actually have no similar to less injury compared to grass pitches for men, for women, for amateur players, whatever not. But they didn't look into certain factors like are they the quality of the artificial pitch, are the boots used on the pitches, are the players playing on those pitches regularly, etc. So then you could say, yes, artificial pitchers have less injury, but there's so many different factors that may be specific to Singapore or another country, or are we using the right boots, etc.
Speaker 1:That might risk the injury. Any specific stats here in Singapore, I don't know. It beats me In terms of the number of players who've gotten injured, maybe at an artificial pitch as compared to somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Not yet, but if the SPL want me to do a study, I'm happy to do something.
Speaker 1:Really I think you should man.
Speaker 2:I think it would be something interesting. Hopefully that will help the decision makers, the policy makers, be able to make better decisions.
Speaker 1:But again, it's a mixed bag as well. Some players do not like the artificial pitchers.
Speaker 2:Most players don't like it and then some.
Speaker 1:They probably grew up on playing on artificial pitchers the younger ones, right so I don't think they've played on really good grass before or whatever, so they might maybe prefer the artificial pitchers, right? In your opinion, does it affect the injuries and whatever?
Speaker 2:I feel that if a player feels that the artificial pitch is going to make them injured, then they're more susceptible to injury.
Speaker 1:So it's a psychological thing more than anything else.
Speaker 2:I think there's an element of it. There's definitely an element of it in play.
Speaker 2:You're a bit worried that the pitch is hard, can I push more, can I turn more, can I run more, etc. And that might alter the way you play and that might pick up injuries as well. It doesn't help that there's been a lot of injuries on artificial pitchers, which increases the fear as well. But in terms of we've been at Jalan Bazaar this year and in terms of bad injuries by the kind of fractures that we had which are like you can't control, we haven't had more. If you look back, we haven't had more tendon problems. We haven't had any aches so far touch wood.
Speaker 2:It's been pretty similar to playing at Hukong last year as well.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's a little unfair sometimes because you know, when certain players they play on Jalan Bazaar Stadium at the Jalan Bazaar Stadium and then they get injured, and then straight away, straight away on social media is change the pitch, this and that, but there are so many different elements that go into a player sustaining an injury or getting an injury. So there's so many things and you're right about the grade of the artificial pitchers as well the quality of the pitchers.
Speaker 2:I think FIFA is looking into that as well. I think they're going to be putting out some sort of quality assurance as in. So hopefully that means the pitches that we bring into Singapore will be of FIFA grade, which will then help the players.
Speaker 1:Listen, in my opinion. I just prefer natural grass. Not because of the injury part. It's just you know, you just play on grass.
Speaker 2:Football should be on grass, as it is in England and Europe and stuff, unless you can't grow the grass like maybe Eastern Europe or something like that.
Speaker 1:They do here. You know in Singapore, you know with the national stadium right now the sports are up. They do grow it and then they transfer it when a game you know gets.
Speaker 2:Yes, it comes cost as well, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:but yeah, but maintenance wise as well. You know, you got to weigh the pros and cons and obviously the injuries part come into play. Yeah, now prevention of injuries right, is it even possible from a physiotherapy? That's a good question.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think prevention is the wrong word, right it should be reduction, so reduction in risk.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So everything you do, say, example, we give you a program and say it's a prevention, there's still a chance you're going to pick up the injury. Yeah, so is it then prevention? What we're trying to do is just reduce the risk of picking up the injury.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So if we can reduce the risk by building up strength you know, getting your sleep and recovery right, your nutrition right, right we're in the right boots on the pitch. Whatever, all of these are strategies in play to reduce the risk of injury. And if we can drop it 30, 40, 50 percent, that's great.
Speaker 1:What are the physical stuff that you guys do at Physiocircle to reduce the risk?
Speaker 2:So I mean we will look at a player and in an ideal way, hopefully next year, what we'll do is we'll get them in preseason testing Right. So we will get numbers for quads, hamstring, groin your glutes, et cetera mobility, flexibility, the way you jump land, to see how the forces, even through both legs, and looking at previous history. So from then we will look at stuff like is the quads, the hamstring ratio, the right number?
Speaker 2:right is the groin, to kind of a doctor to that doctor ratio, the right number. There are certain numbers that will then show you if it's too high, too low, more risk of injury. And then we'll be able to then say these are things you need to work on. Build up a strength to reduce the risk of injury. Play. If we know you've had four ankle injuries last year, then we'll get you on stability world, building up strength for the ankles, the lower legs.
Speaker 2:Make sure you're wearing the right boots and doing rehab based on that, so that you can do that through the season to reduce injuries.
Speaker 1:It's pretty individual as well, Isn't it should be? Yeah, it shouldn't be a blanket one.
Speaker 2:Yeah it should be individualized, otherwise you might reduce a little bit based on specific Listen.
Speaker 1:This is. This is great and anyway did. This is being done professionally in Europe and you know and it should be done, and it has to be done because, like you said, it's gonna reduce the risk of Somebody getting injured the players.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the players deserve the right care so that they can be their best, and that's that's what we should All be focusing on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly brilliant, you know, and he keeps the player going the whole season. You know, you don't, you don't? The season is not disrupted in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you don't want them their career to be cut short because they had multiple injuries and stuff. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:so so do you equip the players with information like that as well, like, for example, there's some someone comes in injured right and then on the road to rehab? Is there things that yeah?
Speaker 2:I'd say that's one of what we want to focus on in clinic, whether they're professional, amateur, like I said earlier, the different Services that we have, a different kind of pathways you go into, but education is key, yeah, you know, even if they don't complete their rehab, but they go away knowing what to do if this happens again.
Speaker 2:All right, a few things to do before they play football. So to reduce, you know, the amount of people who don't warm up before five, a side, I mean that these DC people are very, very rare, unless they've had loads of injuries and they decide I don't want to have another one. Yeah, so I mean, those are the things that will not prevent injury but reduce injury, and that's what we try and equip you with.
Speaker 1:I like this part because you spoke about the warming up part, right. What goes into a warm-up? It could be. It could be a five, a side game. It could be an 11 v 11, an amateur game in a professional game. What goes into a warm-up? What is the first thing that a player should do when it goes into a warm-up?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think guess understand what the warm-up is for? Yeah, so you're trying to get warm, right, it's isn't the word right. Yeah, so you're. You know, getting the blood flow going through the muscles that you can be using. You're mimicking Similar movements to the sport, getting the heart rate up and just getting the body ready to play the game. You shouldn't be exhausted after a warm-up, right? I mean, if you're warm-up is like 20 minutes and you're guessed, then you know something's not right for the amateur player right.
Speaker 2:But even five to ten minutes, starting off with easy jogs, a little bit of resistance band stuff, hopping and jumping, so you're practicing your landing to prevent kind of rolling ankles, that's good enough already.
Speaker 1:This, this, this buzzword is not a buzzword, is something that's been used a lot in recent times. Right, the activation drills, right. So tell us, for people who are at home watching and listening to this, what is an activation drill Specifically for?
Speaker 2:I mean, is it's once again in the word just to get the muscle working the way? It should be if you are a Desperate worker and you've been just worked at eight to ten hour shift and then you go to game at the cage at seven o'clock, you're not gonna rock up and just start shooting right. Is you need to?
Speaker 1:well, they do, well they do and then they do and then some.
Speaker 2:Now they turn up. What we want is, if you come up 10-15 minutes early, just Bring a band, start doing some stuff that will activate the quads, the hamstring the groups Going to some light jogs, going to passing. I mean, if you, if your players are late a little bit, rondo does no harm as well. Yeah just gets, gets you doing the same movements that you need to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know in your, in your time here right In Singapore and you know dealing with with a club so far, but of course many players who've come in for maybe Another club, who's gone to physio, certainly, whatever, what kind of problems have you faced doing your job? You know your duty, as you know it can be anything right. So what kind of problems have you faced in a professional setting or professional professional players gonna?
Speaker 2:make. I mean I go back to psychology if it's a bad injury of their repeated injuries. Picking up a player with a Low mood or low motivation is tough. I mean at the end of day, sometimes, as the physios we're without with that support them right, and you know if you're away from the club we can't look at it just physically. We're pushing them mentally, trying to drive the motivation, find their why, for what, what we're doing, because it can be lonely, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's tough From a physio point of view. You know when they're in that phase. Sometimes the effort and energy level is not what we want as well. Then you get frustrated. How do you? How?
Speaker 1:do you?
Speaker 2:overcome this. I Mean, sometimes you got to be harsh and it's awesome. What do you want? Like, if it's, if it's, if this is not what you want, then what are we doing here? Yeah and sometimes it's just having that conversation and helping them get out of that.
Speaker 1:Where do you think players are like that, like, like, you see what low levels of motivation for them when they come in when they injured, when they're injured, obviously right. So what? What do you? What do you think goes into your mind? Because if I'm I've injured, I'm going to you to get, to get my rehab done. I'll do anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's not often. Yeah it would be like if you had multiple injuries or you keep getting re-injured. Oh, okay and it's just getting frustrated upset it's. Am I going to ever get back to what I want to be? Yeah and this is just this. Is that how much it blesses is normal?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it happens with daily for us.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah and sometimes, you know, the frustration comes on to us as well. I yeah you meant to help me, but it's, it's. I'm not improving at the rate I want to improve. Sometimes it's you know you say I'm sorry, mate, you're out for six to eight weeks. Yeah and they want to be back in four to five weeks and you know the expectation levels there make you down a bit as well.
Speaker 1:This. This next question is probably related to the one that you just answered. Right, it's? It's a what's your pet peeve as a physio, Like, like you know yeah, just generally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will always and I speak the same probably for the my team as well We'll always put a hundred percent in, right. So if, if you're not gonna put a hundred percent in, if you come in next week and you say my pain is the same and I say, oh, how was the home exercises? Did that cause more problems? I'm like, oh, I didn't do it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That that that gets me right. If you you're paying me money to help you and I've said it to patients before look, I don't think you're in the right frame for rehab right now and I don't want you to waste your money and the other patients who are waiting for slots as well so if you're not gonna put in the effort and time, then don't come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Wait till you're ready, or we have, and it could be because work is busy, you got to look after your kids, whatever, and it's the case I say, hey, look, let's take a break, do these things and then, when you have that six to eight or four weeks, six weeks come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know your profession right it's, it's a. It's a weird kind of thing because you know professionally and business wise, you, you want business, obviously you want people to come in, right, but you, at the same time, the people that come in. You don't want to be seeing them anymore in terms of because you've done your job, but that's the beauty of it, yeah, yeah, so you, you, you were trying to become Not needed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that, that should be the end game.
Speaker 2:If your aim is, I'm gonna get this guy for 40 sessions and build up my my revenue, then then there's something fundamentally wrong as a physio as even if you're a business owner, your core value should be I want to get this guy better or person better, and they're not gonna come back to me, but we're gonna do such a great job that they feel great and if they have someone who gets injured, they will say these are the guys that you should go to really that's what we want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, brilliant that.
Speaker 1:that that's exactly that's not your value, then you need to think about something else, yeah now, before we go and and Any advice for footballers specifically who are coming back from a bad injury. You know, let's, let's forget about the, the minor groins and whatever, because you are gonna come back. I'm talking about the ACL because sometimes it gets to a get, gets to a player and you know, after a while he gives up. Maybe you know what advice can you give to these players who are injured long-term injury, maybe just got an ACL who's gonna get there the knee done, maybe next week? What advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:This is away from the physical point of view and we're talking about them. I would start say think about the mental battle first. Know that it's a long period of time out and you need to. I Always think it's nice and I sometimes get my patients do this right down. What are your motivators Like? Write down what's going to drive you, because if you have that on your Apple notes or on paper on your diary, whatever, on your bad days you can go back to that and think this is the reason why I did this surgery. You find out what your. Why is you use that? Why you can. You can use that as your your strength and find yourself good support structures.
Speaker 2:Yeah of course, be involved in the plan for rehab, don't be passive. I understand each stage. If I was me, I would want to know what stage one. What are we doing? What are the outcomes? What do you need me to do? And then know what each stage entails, right, and be ready for it From a physical point of view. We will also warn you rehab is never linear. It's gonna be up and down physically, mentally, yeah, whatever not. Yeah and so the patient or the person needs to understand that completely as well nice.
Speaker 2:But just know what motivates you and stick, stick to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, before we go, any plans for physical circle to expand, maybe expand to the different clubs here in Singapore and whatever. Is that a conflict of interest if you do two or three clubs?
Speaker 2:I think so. I mean we're very low on how we do also work with the women's team, but we also work with Arian and the women's okay, okay, because they're just down the road toss as well at the arena.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're one of our local clubs. In terms of an amends league, I think will likely stick with how long right? As long as we want it, hopefully for many years and In terms of expansion to the clinic, probably not. At the moment we're just trying to double down on this quality of the work we're doing, the quality of the service pathways that we're providing. Yeah and just build into the community a lot more.
Speaker 1:Should we tell us where you guys are at so that people watching listening to this, your amateur footballer or athlete or anyone or any Walks of life, you can just drop in? Where can we find physical circle?
Speaker 2:Locations wise, we are at Serangoon, we have one at Dobie got in the old promo and then at the cage. I have a clinic there as well, in Kallang Okay, unfortunately, the the one in Boko Timo is going close. We have a small center inside speed gym there but okay, it's been taken away because tough cities closing down.
Speaker 1:Yes, which I?
Speaker 2:think you shouldn't be, but that's another, that's another topic, another day, right. And then you can find us on Instagram at physicalsg, and we do a lot of Education content and videos on that brilliant man Shoban.
Speaker 1:Thanks man for being here. Thank you for sharing some insights on football, specific injuries and you know the works right and hope Physical will do well going forward and for you as well. And say hi to Ayan and company she's been great for for the IT team as well. This has been the latest episode of football talk with the Silver Fox as a podcast. I will see you soon to the next episode. Cheers you.