WAG Achilis tendinits (also Severs) - advice needed please!

[gymnastmom38]

Little background. Dd has had bouts with Severs for about a year and a half now. About a month ago she started complaining about pain in her Achilles and the top of her left foot (different than when her Severs acts up). It was so bad that I decided to take her to an Orthopedic surgeon right away. He x-rayed it and decided she needed to go in a boot for 2 weeks because she had Achilles tendinitis and tendinitis on the top of her foot.

Boot came off last Friday and no more pain (yay!) He said she needed to go to physical therapy to figure out how to alter her workouts and see what they said about her ankle.

On Tuesday I took her to her physical therapy appointment and he did a thorough examination on her (asked her tons of questions). Yes she gets headaches, yes, her back curves a lot and her butt sticks out, yes, she's very flexible on her left leg. He came to the conclusion that she's too dominant on her right leg and her left hamstring is too long so it needs to shorten up to be able to support her foot. Says her long muscle is pulling everything down and throwing everything off. He's giving her exercises that will actually make her LESS flexible. He actually told her she should switch up her gymnastics routines to have everything be "righty" instead. He thinks that everyone should be just as good on both legs. She almost started crying because I don't think he understood how hard that could be.

Anyway, has anyone had to deal with this before? A lot of what he said made sense that she needs to strengthen that leg to support that foot since she puts so much pressure on the right, but doesn't everyone have a dominant leg? I'm just so confused...

 

[gymgymgymnast08]

I'm sorry I don't know anything about severs or Achilles tendinitis, but I can tell you a lot about physical therapy. Try to go to a sports specific physically therapy place because not everyone understands sports, especially gymnastics! Getting re-hab for a knee replacement is way different than anything a gymnast will need done! My physical therapist actually specialized in running injuries so she was great with my running injury. But when she wasn't there I had another physical therapist and he had no idea what to do with me because he had no sports background. See if you can specifically find an ex gymnast or talk to your doctor about the exercises. Good luck!

 

[emilykatherine]

I have achilles in both of mine and I went to pt he said mine was caused because my hip wasn't strong enough and said I could do anything involving my hip and I look at him and said sorry but that won't work at all because almost all of my skills involve my hip. Tell him/her that you can't do that and a lot of the time there rearrange what they were planing on doing.

 

[Kiwi]

See if you can find a St John Neuromuscular Therapist who should be able to analyse the whole picture of what is going on with her body. If not then if you can find a physiotherapist who understands gymnastics, or if not then a dance physiotherapist might be the next best thing. I don't think it is necessarily about becoming less flexible, but muscle balance is very important. For example, if her butt sticks out, the muscles in the front (quads and hip flexors) may be too short and need stretching, and the muscles at the back (glutes and hamstrings) may need strengthening. My DD has been seeing a St John Neuromuscular Therapist and it has done wonders for her flexibility as well as helping her recover from injuries and preventing new ones.

 

[BlairBob]

Generally for Sever's or Osgood-Schlaters, no pounding exercise. No tumbling on floor, vaulting. Same thing with tendonitis. Lay off, work around.

Yeah, switching legs is not gonna happen. Ideally, you should be able to do just about everything on both sides but Round-Off should stay on one side.

 

[txgymfan]

You might consider getting a second opinion.