Posts Tagged Physio

This post gives you a behind-the-scenes look at world record and Olympian aerial skier, Lydia Lassila’s journey from debilitating back pain which made her contemplate retirement to a world-record at the last winter Olympics.

It’s hard to comprehend the commitment need for an athlete to perform ski landings sustaining up to 9x body weight when they are experiencing pain just turning over in bed. This was the stark reality that Lydia was faced with when returning to her sport after the birth of her first child. I was asked by the winter Olympic team to assess the possibility of Lydia getting back to her best. After a detailed examination, it became apparent Lydia needed 3 phases to her rehabilitation program:

Phase 1) Minimise aggravating lifestyle and sporting activities combined with manual therapy and specific muscle activation strategies. Pacing and flare-up strategies were a must.

Phase 2) Retrain Lydia’s movement patterns for aerial-skiing by breaking the movement sequence down into small pieces that could be practised on water in Switzerland, to minimise impact.

Phase 3) Building elite muscle strength, finely-tuned with concentric and eccentric muscle programming in specific joint angles needed by Lydia to form the complex movement patterns required for aerial skiing and the high-impact landing.

For your benefit, attached is a link to a case study covering the behind-the-scenes rehabilitation program which I designed for Lydia. This program was undertaken by Lydia and led her back to full recovery, an Olympic medal at Socchi and becoming the first woman to ever perform a quadruple somersault in aerial skiing.

Lydia Lasilla case study file

Recently Lydia interviewed me on the strategies required to overcome long-standing back pain and some of the new and innovative strategies we are using at Bounce back.  In her own words Lydia talks about her own rehabilitation experience.

Lydia’s rehab experience and her interview of Trish Wisbey-Roth