About Your Biomechanical Assessment

Welcome to the Court Clinic. This clinic specialises in biomechanics and the Chartered Physiotherapists here have a special interest in this field. The biomechanical assessment involves finding out about your pain, looking at the way you stand and walk and establishing if your back, hips and knees are contributing to your problems.

During your initial assessment the physiotherapist will ask questions about your medical history, how long you have had the symptoms, if there was an obvious cause and what makes the pain better or worse. They will observe the way you stand and walk and then examine the overall function of your lower limbs. This may involve assessing your back and hips. During the assessment, if you do not understand anything, please ask.

Depending on the assessment, the physiotherapist may suggest you undergo a scan on our inhouse scanning system. She will alsol prescribe exercises for you to do. The exercises are an extremely important part of your treatment, please do them! They may also provide you with a pair of temporary insoles to be worn in your shoes. The insoles may have additions (such as wedges or raises) which will change the way that you walk.

Subsequent consultations will be required to assess how you are progressing with your exercises and your insoles. Hopefully, you will already have noticed an improvement.

The physiotherapist may recommend that you get a pair of custom-made orthotics. To do this, a casting of your foot will be made and sent to a laboratory. They will make your orthotics from this impression with the appropriate prescription as decided by your physiotherapist. The turnaround time from casting to return of orthotics is about two weeks.

When the orthotics come back from the laboratory, an appointment will be arranged to fit them for you. You will be advised to break them in slowly, gradually increasing the wearing time over a couple of weeks. You should only start wearing them for sport when you can wear them comfortably during normal daily activity. If you are having problems during this period, please contact us. An appointment will be arranged to review your progress approximately six weeks later.

As you have realised, solving your "foot problem" will not always occur overnight. Remember that you cannot undo in a few weeks what it took years to create. Our aims are to treat your present symptoms, resolve long term biomechanical problems and prevent pain in the future.