McEntee Physio & Performance Centre

McEntee Physio & Performance Centre Bringing you the best in Chartered Physiotherapy and Performance Conditioning Chartered Physiotherapists

13/10/2025

Soleus Raise - Single leg control:

🏃🏻Marathon just around the corner?

👉The soleus is one of the primary calf muscles working alongside the gastrocnemius. It's function is biased when the knee is bent due to it's attachment points.

🎯This exercise focuses on working this muscle (like that when running with a bent knee) - with the added component of single leg control to challenge the foot/ankle that bit more.

✅Focus on having the weight over the knee and foot, and focus on pushing through the first and second toes, holding for 1-2 seconds

10/10/2025

👉Quadruped hip mobilisations (inferior and lateral glides)

🎯Banded hip mobilisations can be useful in the early stages of managing FAI and/or intra-articular hip pathology (labral tears/cartilage defects) where deficits can be seen in hip range of motion (commonly hip flexion and hip internal rotation)

📊They can be used as an adjunct to strength-based rehabilitation of the lumbopelvic stabilisers to provide short-term relief (pain/range of motion improvements) to allow you to perform the broader strength rehab plan which will help with long-term management

✅Start in a quadruped position
✅Place the resistance band at the proximal thigh
✅Allow the band to pull laterally or inferiorly
✅Weight shift forwards and backwards

09/10/2025

🎯Patellar Tendon Pain

👉The patellar tendon can be a common source of knee pain, particularly in those post ACL reconstruction where the patellar tendon has been used as a graft.

✅Loading the patellar tendon using isometrics can help improve the load tolerance of the tendon and decrease pain, in conjunction with other loading strategies.

⚡This split stance isometric push into the bar is a nice way of loading the tendon and can be helpful to decrease pain before other quad strengthening exercises. .natera

07/10/2025

🎯My goal here is to strengthen my calves in outer range while also reducing the sensitivity of my achilles bursitis.

👉By using isometric holds, I can gradually build tolerance to the compression at the heel and lower the risk of further irritation.

✅Given the pain is still quite acute, these holds are more manageable than loading my calves through range.

📍The isometric holds also let me target the position where I’m weakest, at end range plantarflexion. As you can see in the video, when I switch from left to right, my heel drops, and I struggle to keep my right knee in full extension.

06/10/2025

Single Leg Pin Squat:

🎯The single leg pin squat can be used in the early stages of anterior knee pain rehabilitation (patellar tendon / patellofemoral pain) when you are looking to get high mechanical load through the quadriceps in a pain-free range of motion.

📍The safety bars can be set at the desired height to manipulate the depth of the movement. This can be useful for heavy slow resistance (HSR) training in patellar tendon rehab or in people with patellofemoral pain where patellofemoral joint stress rises in a graded fashion from 45° onwards.

🔥The pin squat is an excellent exercise to help with controlling:
-Depth
-Tempo
-Tendon / Joint stress

✅Start by:
-Using a shallow range
-Using a slow tempo
-Using lighter load

📊Progress by:
-Increasing range - lowering safety bar
-Increasing load

02/10/2025

⚡Prone Lying External Rotation (Inner Range)

📍This targeted rotator cuff exercise primarily biases the infraspinatus and teres minor, which play a considerable role in stabilising the shoulder joint.

✅Loading in the inner range promotes control and strength where the shoulder is quite often under functioning / most vulnerable.

👉Position face down, with the shoulder and elbow at 90°. A prop / cushion under the helps to relax the shoulder/arm so that deltoid is less likely to be involved in this position, thus allowing us to bias the external rotators.

📊Ideal for early-stage rehab, post-op cuff repairs, or neuromuscular re-education.
Enhances rotator cuff activation without excessive load. Can be quite a nice option for an irritable shoulder when we want to work hard but without involving too much load.

30/09/2025

❓Why does ankle stiffness matter?

👉In an athletic performance context, an ankle needs to function like a spring, to transmit and generate force. When we talk about ankle stiffness (in this context) , we are referring to the tendon and joint's ability to absorb, store and release energy as needed.

📊By minimising energy loss, it allows more force to be transferred into the ground, thus generating greater projectile forces, which in most cases are preferable in an athletic performance context.

For me, this is an on-going work in progress.

📍When you zoom in, you can see my heel dropping on impact. I’m managing an achilles bursitis at the moment, so improving my ankle stiffness is one of the key things I’m focusing on to help improve my mechanics so as to improve movement efficiency to reduce any excessive force acting on the bursa.

29/09/2025

🎯Lumbopelvic Control:

✅Lumbopelvic control refers to the ability to stabilise and coordinate the lumbar spine (lower back) and pelvis during movement.

📍Lumbopelvic control is an important part of hip/groin, low back and hamstring rehab. A lack of lumbopelvic control can place excess force on the structures around the pelvis leading to injury.

⚡The banded deadbug is a nice way to improve our lumbopelvic control. This exercise challenges our lower abdominal muscles to control the pelvis maintain and neutral pelvic position.

Beyond this, we also challenge pelvic control in weightbearing (on the feet), then moving towards developing the ability to control with speed, with rotation and reactive tasks.

26/09/2025

🔥Ankle Iso-Push:

🎯The ankle iso-push is another run-specific overcoming isometric promoted by Alex Natera. As previously discussed with the hip iso-push, overcoming isometrics require a person to push maximally against an immovable object.

✅The ankle iso-push is performed with the bar resting on the upper traps, similar to the setup for a barbell back squat. Place the ball of the foot of the working leg under the bar. The knee and the hip are fully extended with the ankle positioned between 0 and 10° of plantarflexion.

The ankle iso-push is designed to:
👉🏽Provide a low-fatigue, high force stimulus
👉🏽Challenge the calf complex and ankle stiffness in run-specific positions
👉🏽Improve tendon health and stiffness in the Achilles’ tendon
👉🏽Improve rate of force development (how quickly an athlete can develop force)
👉🏽Test calf complex peak force, limb symmetry and rate of force development as part of a return to training or return to play test battery

25/09/2025

📍Lower Limb Rehabilitation:

⚡Plyometric exercises are movements we use to assist with power development, typically towards the mid-end stage of rehabilitation.

🎯It is important to be able to produce the force to get off the ground quickly in jumps but equally important to be able to control the faster rotational forces applied to the knee.

✅The focus of this exercise is to control the faster rotational knee movements that are driven by trunk rotation within the lunge jumps.

23/09/2025

🎯Lateral Hip Control & Strength:

👀Lateral hip strength is something that is often overlooked. Strength and stability at both the hip & pelvis, through range, plays a key role in both normal every day movements and athletic demands.

✅In this case, keeping the shoulder and hip pinned against the wall, we are reducing any compensatory lateral shift when lifting the foot off the floor.

✅If one is lacking sufficient function at the lateral hip, it can have a knock on affect, resulting in overload of adjacent structures above and below the hip.

22/09/2025

🎯Back supported split squat:

📊The back supported split squat can be incorporated into early stage knee rehab (post -ACL reconstruction / TKR / knee surgeries) where compensatory movements are often seen with unilateral oriented exercises such as the split squat.

📍One such compensatory movement is a forward trunk lean to make it a more hip/glute-dominant movement to protect the knee in the early-mid post-operative phase.

✅The squat rack acts as a constraint to prevent a forward trunk lean (which would make it a more glute dominant movement). By maintaining an upright torso, the knee translates forward towards the toes making it a more quad dominant movement.

🔥Feel free to shorten the stance and bring the front foot closer to the squat rack to increase forward knee translation and quadriceps loading. We want this movement to be pain-free.

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