https://www.nicolesurdykaphysio.com/

Nicole Surdyka Physio, Los Angeles, CA (2026)

02/02/2023

Yesterday was Women in Sports Day and while I tend to think that we should always be celebrating the incredible people in women’s sports, it’s nice to have a day to highlight them.

Sport should not be exclusive. Sport should be accessible to all. Sport should showcase our strength, our power, our stamina, our resilience. Sport should inspire.

I’m grateful that I grew up with the ability to play a sport I love, and that I now get to work in sport. My mission has always been the same: to do my part to help the continued development of girls’ and women’s soccer so that the next generation has access to role models in women’s soccer and a belief that they too can have a career in sport.

02/01/2023

After I listen to the athlete tell me all about their current injury and asking some follow-up questions, I want to take a thorough and athlete-centric history.

These are some of the questions I ask the athlete and what information I hope to get from each one.

The main thing is to let the athlete feel heard, understood, and taken care of.

(Not a completely exhaustive list)

01/29/2023

It is estimated that 1 in 20 teenagers, and 1 in 10 adult women experience Patellofemoral Pain (PFP). Anecdotally, I have seen many female soccer players with PFP.

Since glute weakness is commonly seen in patients with PFP, it has long been believed that glute weakness is a causative factor for the development of PFP. And to further confirm that belief, glute strengthening programs have been associated with positive outcomes. (Confirmation bias?)

HOWEVER - Prospective studies show that PFP cannot be predicted by glute strength testing.

SO… Glute weakness may develop as a result of PFP as opposed to causing it. Which begs the question, which comes first, the Patellofemoral Pain, or the glute weakness?

What does this mean clinically?
Assessing and training glute strength in patients with PFP DOES NOT give the whole picture. Is it helpful? Sure. Do I still regularly give glute strengthening exercises to patients I see with PFP? Of course. But there are more factors that must be assessed and addressed.

What other factors do you look at when assessing patients with Patellofemoral Pain? I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments below! I kindly ask that you simply be respectful of others. 🙏

12/29/2022

Looking forward to my 4th in-person conference!

2018: Barcelona
2019: London
2020: 😫🙄🦠
2021: Virtual (speaker on gender disparities in ACL injury risk)
2022: Lyon (won the Case Study Contest)
2023: London (speaking on translating research into practice in women’s football and giving an update on my case study from 2022)

Who else is coming to ⁉️

12/05/2022

I’d forgotten how much I love playing.
fc always creates the most fun, inclusive, and competitive local pickup games right on Venice Beach. It’s been over 2 years since I’ve played with them but the vibes are exactly the same as I remember. Thanks for always welcoming me in, guys! And now there’s an all women’s game as well! 🤩

First time playing in my soccer shoes and not only felt great in them, but also got complimented on how they look! 🔥

I truly love living in LA and finding little communities like the one created at VBFC. Of course, my favorite part of living in LA is spending time and making memories with my favorite person on earth .surdykapt 😍

11/02/2022

If we’re going to help treat and reduce the risk of injuries in soccer players, then we first need to know what types of injuries soccer players get.

What are the most common injuries seen in soccer?

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE STUDY
By: Markus Waldén, Martin Hagglund, and Jan Ekstrand
-Began in 2001-02 season
-Prospectively tracked 11 clubs from Europe (over 250 players)
-Recorded individual player exposure times and time-lost injuries
-Have added most of the top teams in Europe to the cohort

Now the question - is this data the same in the women’s game? Although research in women’s sports is severely lacking compared to all the research done in men’s sports, there is some new exciting research in the women’s game. More on that to come tomorrow 😉

11/01/2022

Here’s a breakdown of the typical yearly macrocycle for soccer players.

1. General Preparation - This phase will typically occur during the early weeks of pre-season. The goals of this phase are to build baseline strength and aerobic capacity. In soccer sessions, we want to give players a bit more space. This will place more emphasis on aerobic capacity by giving players more space to work with and run around in. The overall training volume should be fairly high with lower intensity.

2. Specific Preparation - As we get nearer to the season, in the later stages of pre-season, we want our training to become more specific. This is when the physical preparation focuses more on repeated sprint ability, change of direction, and accelerations/decelerations. In soccer sessions, we can utilize small-sided games in order to place more emphasis on those physical demands. We also want to start exposing the athletes to match play in scrimmages or friendlies where each player is exposed to 45 —> 60 —> 75 —> 90 minutes of match play.

3. During the competitive season, the training volume should decrease significantly while the intensity peaks. Players should be at their peak performance levels. We want to make sure they are at least maintaining their fitness levels, and improve them where needed/desired, but the emphasis is on recovery. It’s important to remember that our role as support staff is to help the players to be able to perform their best on the field.

4. In the off-season, or transition phase, the focus can be placed more on the individual. End of season reports with a needs analysis for each player should be prepared so that each athlete can have an individualized plan for their development. This is also the time that we can better address any lingering niggles from the season and implement risk reduction strategies.

There are some great resources on this topic including a presentation by for (available on YouTube) and another one by as part of the Bend the Curve Webinar Series (available on their website).

10/24/2022

In this exercise, the players have to react to a verbal cue (you can also make it a visual cue) to get possession of the ball.

I like this exercise for young players because it keeps them engaged, trains their reaction time, and is a safe way to begin training 50/50 challenges. This is also a fun warm-up, active recovery day, or MD-1 activity for adult players (Tara and Amanda could have played this for hours).

10/22/2022

A skill that I think is often underutilized and under appreciated in the rehab setting is learning how to create a good, effective program.

After performing your assessment and determining things like tissue health, stage of healing, ruling out red flags, and getting their history, it is important to figure out what demands their sport requires of their body, and what their current capabilities are.

The demands that an athlete will place on their bodies differ across sports and even among different positions within the same sport. You don’t need to be an expert in every sport, simply ask your athlete what they need to be capable of, or even better - call up their sports or performance coach and ask them what this athlete needs to be able to perform.

Once you have figured out what the end goal is, determine what their current capacity is. Then you can figure out what needs to be done to get from where they are to wherever they need to be.

This is where considerations like timing of season and training load come into play. Creating too much of a spike in their training load can increase their risk of injury. Not pushing them enough, on the other hand, won’t adequately prepare them for the demands of their sport.

If they are in the off-season, we may have more time to gradually build up their chronic workload to adequately prepare them for their sport. If we get the athlete in the middle of their season and they want to return as quickly as possible, we may not have as much time and need to try to maintain their chronic workload as much as possible in modified ways until we are satisfied with the tissue health and readiness of the athlete to return to training and competition.

10/21/2022

The tactics that a manager chooses to employ with a team will dictate the physical demands placed on the players. There are 4 moments of a game, and that’s how I have broken down the information: offense, defense, offense to defense transition, and defense to offense transition.

In what’s known as the “tiki taka” style of play made famous by Barcelona when Pep Guardiola was their manager, the team high presses to force the opposition into sending a long ball. Pep’s team then wins that ball and begins their attack straight away by maintaining possession. While in possession, everyone must be constantly moving off the ball. Tiki taka just means that the ball is always buzzing around the pitch from player to player in 1 or 2 touches with quick, short combination plays. Pep has since tried to distance himself from the phrase “tiki taka” as he has tried to emphasize that the importance of the possession is not for possession itself, but to create an overload and then attack the open space.

This style of play requires that players be really technically sound, and allowed for the development of some smaller players who may have been overlooked elsewhere (Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta). Players in this style must be quick, however, and have good aerobic capacity as they are expected to be constantly moving around the pitch and then quickly exploiting space. Pep also has a “6 second rule” that states that the team must win the ball back within 6 seconds of losing so as not to allow the opposing team to build up their own attack. This means that the transition from offense to defense must happen very quickly.

Jurgen Klopp utilizes the “Gegenpressing” style of play which he has termed “Heavy Metal” football. Gegenpressing means to counter the counter-attack, and that is what this high pressing style of play aims to achieve. They push a high line defensively, looking to win the ball as high up the field as possible. Klopp has said that winning the ball close to their attacking goal is more effective than any playmaker out there. Once they’ve won the ball, they look to quickly exploit an opening and attack it with speed.

Continued in comments👇

10/20/2022

INITIAL EVALUATION OF A SOCCER PLAYER

I start by asking what happened in an open-ended way and give the athlete time to tell me everything that they feel is pertinent. It can be a challenge at times, especially when you are on a time crunch, but I urge you to let them finish speaking before you start asking follow up questions. This gives you insight into what is important to this athlete, and what might be bothering them the most. It also shows them that you value their opinion and helps them to feel heard.

Once they tell me the story of what happened and what their current symptoms are, I ask a few follow up questions that may need further clarification. The table above lists some of these questions and what information I hope to gain from them.

10/20/2022

The medial knee is comprised of many other structures besides just the MCL, and the MCL itself is made up of different fibers and divisions.

The superficial MCL is the largest structure of the medial knee and its fibers run vertically from its femoral attachment to two different tibial attachments. The proximal tibial attachment of the superficial MCL is primarily a soft tissue attachment over the semimembranosus tendon about 12mm distal to the joint line. The distal attachment is directly to bone about 60mm distal to the joint line. The superficial MCL is the knee’s primary valgus restraint, particularly the proximal division. The distal division provides primary external rotation restraint at 30 degrees of knee flexion and internal rotation stability at all angles of knee flexion based on cadaveric studies.

The deep portion of the MCL runs contiguous with the medial joint capsule and is adjacent to the medial meniscus. The deep MCL provides external rotation torque restraint between 30 and 90 degrees of knee flexion and is comprised of its meniscofemoral and meniscotibial divisions. The meniscofemoral attachment is responsible for valgus stabilization at all angles of knee flexion and is the primary internal rotation restraint at 20, 60, and 90 degrees of knee flexion. The meniscotibial portion is responsible for internal rotation stability at 0 and 30 degrees.

This anatomical information is important to understand in the context of our clinical evaluation of a suspected medial knee injury.

Head over to my blog to learn more about medial knee injuries and how to assess them. Link in bio.

Nicole Surdyka Physio

02/02/2023

02/01/2023

01/29/2023

12/29/2022

12/05/2022

11/02/2022

11/01/2022

10/24/2022

10/22/2022

10/21/2022

10/20/2022

10/20/2022

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category