Orthotics
Assessing The Problem
Do you develop foot pain when walking or running? Does this pain affect which footwear you choose? How frequently you run or walk longer distances?
For active people, from walkers to runners, correct alignment of the feet, knees, hips and spine is crucial for strong and pain free motion. The loss of control and poor loading patterns in any of these body segments can lead to imbalance, injury, and pain.
That is why a gait assessment can be so valuable in preventing and resolving injury.
At Optimal Physio, we utilise the latest technology to understand exactly how your foot behaves when standing, walking, running or performing movements like a squat. This is additional information to the we can assess your muscle strength and joint flexibility, and your body control. We include video analysis to assess your control and symmetry, and we assess your foot pressures on our specialised force plate from FootScan.
With this thorough assessment, we can identify your injury risk, and prescribe the right detailed program and support for you.
Gait Analysis – Who
Can Benefit?
A recent study on US military personnel showed that using this technology of combining gait analysis with 3D printed, light weight orthotics reduced injury rate by up to 60%.
Manchester City use this technology in their medicals and create custom made orthotics for their players to enhance comfort, performance and reduce injury risk. We simply bring this technology to you and treat you like a multimillion pound superstar that you are!
Why the need for gait analysis?
One product is Fits 3D printed insole technology. It will change our practice and remove pain and suffering for those with foot and ankle pain. Helps performance, comfort and reduces pain by optimising your foot mechanics which improves force transmission and performance. It is a fantastic system for putting a truly bespoke insole into your shoe or trainer to ensure you get the best outcome.
Building A Solution
Gait analysis, what is it?
Simply it is measuring the forces the your foot has to cope with and transmit in your leg as you move. This helps our understanding of how your foot behaves, and copes with this load. Any abnormal loading patterns are then easily identifiable so we can create a plan to reduce this loading pattern, reduce injury risk, reduce pain and improve performance and comfort. We will ask you to perform a series of movements and walk across a square pad on the floor. This has an incurable amount of sensors inside it which detect and assess everything your foot does as it in contact with the ground. Without this technology we just can’t fully understand how the foot is behaving. So previous to this we had a rough idea, but very limited information. We had to work on assumptions and experience. This led to inconsistency.
This system not only solves these issues but also provides a reliable outcome measure to compare effectiveness of treatments and assess you in standing, balancing, walking, running and squatting. It has over 4,000 sensors making it the most accurate assessment of dynamic gait analysis currently available. This is essential information for any clinician, but previously we had to rely on much more subjective information which wasn’t repeatable or accurate. It allows our clinicians to look at how your foot really behaves when in contact with the ground in a way which without this equipment simply isn’t possible.
How we solve the problem
Who is it for?
- Runners or people who spend a lot of time on their feet.
- Common conditions include:
- pain into the big toe
- across the ball of your foot
- into the arch
- Heel pain such as:
- plantar faciiitis
- achilles pain
- ankle joint injuries
- pain such as osteoarthritis
- You don’t need to be in pain to benefit, we can use it:
- to improve comfort
- performance
- reduce the risk of injury
Solution
This is such a clever piece of equipment which assesses you during dynamic activities and replicates your unique way of walking and running creates a perfectly bespoke orthotic which will provide you with the optimal level of support, to improve your performance, comfort and can be easily adapted for your shoe, your requirements and have a specific need addressed so that your right and left foot are treated individually rather than having an off the shelf model which gives the same support for both feet even though we know the move and behave differently.
We can now improve the fitting to suit running shoes, golf shoes, football boots, cycling shoes, or ski boots. We combine this technology with our expert physiotherapy clinicians to provide a completely tailored programme and treatment specific to your sport and your needs. We are the first physiotherapy provider in Scotland to bring this cutting edge technology and we are excited to help improve your running performance, comfort, reduce any foot, heel or ankle pain and also help prevent injuries.
So if you want to :
- Perform better
- Have less pain
- Not have to worry about pain relief
- Avoid having to modify your training plan
- Avoid being out injured
- And you want to be treated the same way elite athletes are
FAQs
Why Phits?
Previous methodologies are dated and leave huge room for error. Analysis on a treadmill doesn’t show what is happening underneath the foot. It also happens so fast it is difficult to interpret and is open to huge bias from the clinician. If this is in a running shop the chances are the sales assistant has had little to no experience in analysing gait and running patterns. The there was the moulds whereby you push your foot into an impression box, this is simply out of date and not as accurate as it could be. Off the shelf orthotics treat the left and the right foot equally
What did Paula Radcliffe say about them;
Can you describe the difference between the traditional orthotics and the Phits 3D printed orthotics you wear now?
Paula: Well, the biggest thing is the durability. They simply don’t wear out! You can keep using them, you can run a lot of miles in them and they basically don’t show much damage at all. Only the top cover wears out and these are easily replaced. The rest, it stays there the whole time. And I think it’s more precise than the traditional orthotics. Because it’s exactly the same each time that it is created. And it is lighter. It doesn’t deform with heat and get as soft as with the traditional ones… Sometimes with the older ones, if it was very warm, they would built up, or they would get a hole or they would deform a little bit. The Phits insoles don’t do that.
Do you wear Phits insoles for every run?
Paula: says “Yes! I never run without them, even for walking I use the insoles, they are always in my shoes. I don’t think I ran without my orthotics since 1997. And certainly since I got the Phits insoles, every run is done with them. “
So if you want to perform better, have less pain, not have to worry about pain relief, modifying your training plan or being out injured, and you want to be treated the same way elite athletes are, then please get in touch and arrange a gait analysis assessment at Optimal Physio.
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