High Performance Manager, Medical, Martin Wollin discusses Fred’s road to recovery following the Club Captain’s hamstring injury sustained against Perth Glory on Sunday.
High Performance Manager, Medical, Martin Wollin discusses Fred’s road to recovery following the Club Captain’s hamstring injury sustained against Perth Glory on Sunday.
The initial part is to assess the extent of the injury and you do that clinically and via MRI scan which sets the basis for recovery.
The thing with a hamstring injury is high velocity sprints are really challenging, and you need to make the muscle strong, and train it up rather significantly to cope with that.
If you look at a player like Fred, he runs a lot and covers a lot of ground in midfield. We really need to take his running and recovery to a high level. The basic outline of a player-s recovery from this type of injury starts off with acute management.
Fred has had treatment around the clock with ice and compression to really settle the bleeding which comes with muscle injuries like that. We want to restore a normal walking pattern so he can move pain free and with normal stride length. Once he can do that, we can start the rehab process and start him jogging and building up.
He has already done two functional rehab sessions on the field which focuses a lot on lateral drills, and working in a way which doesn-t aggravate the injury. He-s still heavily protected by firm compression while he does function rehab. You then complement that with specific physio rehab, strength and conditioning, and balance exercises which focus on the core.