Sports Injury - Prevention Is The Best Cure
October 2007
The technique seems in some way to access the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting the body’s ability to restore structural integrity, although the actual workings of it still remain firmly in the realm of theoretical speculation.
The fact that it works however is beyond doubt as recent ground breaking research (about to be published and presented at the First International Fascia Research Congress in Boston in October 2007) has discovered. Although there are many studies demonstrating that certain treatments can increase hamstring flexibility, there is none that has demonstrated that this increase can be maintained.
A randomised controlled trial allocated 116 male and female volunteers to either a control or an intervention group. Using a single treatment of The Bowen Technique significantly increased the flexibility of the hamstring muscles in asymptomatic subjects and maintained this increase for a period of one week.
No other treatment technique has been shown to maintain improvements in flexibility for a complete week without further treatment. In addition, this increase was demonstrated without any form of loading, warm up or stretching pre- or post-treatment.
It is the lasting effects of Bowen that have the most impact as far as sports therapists are concerned. Neil Burke is a sports rehabilitator working with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).
This covers the incredibly physical sports of Irish Football and Hurling. “The mindset of most of the GAA players is that a rub will fix everything, but I have been sold on Bowen mainly from the work I have done with hamstrings.”
Burke who works mostly with the GAA team Moyle Rovers, cites the case of one player who had a torn left ACL and developed a hamstring tightness as protection. “He had a lump in the head of his hamstring twice the size of a fist and after five or six heavy sessions using my elbow I’d made little or no headway.” The change with Bowen however was almost immediate and after two Bowen sessions the lump had disappeared and the range of movement had increased “massively.” “The amount of work I have to do with Bowen isn’t comparable to what I normally do,” Burke says.
It’s early days for Burke as he only started his Bowen Technique training in January 2007, yet Bowen already accounts for around 20% of his work. And word is spreading. “I’d like to think that as the rugby season starts, I can be doing 80% of my hamstring work using Bowen. It will certainly make life easier.”
An uninjured athlete is quite simply the one that has the edge over the competition. If the average loss to training is 12% of competition time, then reducing this element by 50% is a massive boost. Reducing it further – as has been seen with regular Bowen treatments – can mean that a competitor is spending more time concentrating on fitness levels, has greater commitment and therefore the enhanced ability to compete.
Neil Gibson was a Team Great Britain pentathlete before a misdiagnosed injury resulted in drastic and unnecessary surgery. A pelvic imbalance had left him with a leg length difference of nearly two inches. After six Bowen sessions, he had returned to training, was back on the team and continued to represent his country at international level. In addition he was able to train fully without losing a single day of training to injury over the subsequent two years of his career. Now a qualified Bowen therapist, Gibson has no doubts about the profound role that Bowen can play in the effective prevention and management of injury.
From a team perspective it can make the difference between success and failure. In football, the common complaint by the end of January is the level of injuries that a club carries and the subsequent lack of players available for selection.
Anecdotal evidence from those involved suggests that Bowen in particular could be just the tool to reduce this problem.
If we mean what we say when we talk about sports medicine, then we are duty bound to explore the health option rather than concentrating solely on problem solving. The paradigm shift is waiting to happen.
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