James McDonald up to the challenge of returning to AFL

At age 35, James McDonald is an unlikely recruit for an AFL club. However, the former Melbourne captain is in excellent shape to take on the role of player-coach at the newly formed Greater Western Sydney next season.

While most players retire around 30, the midfielder has managed to avoid serious injury and is ready for the challenge of returning to elite-level football. A key part of James’ fitness regime has been ongoing osteopathic treatment.

“When I finished up my career with Melbourne I didn’t need any operations, have soft tissue damage or anything like that,” James said. “I’m fit and flexible and able to do everything I need to.

“It’s probably why Greater Western Sydney have asked me to pull the boots on again.”

During his final years with the Melbourne, James augmented the professional physiotherapy he received from the Club with regular osteopathic treatment from Recharge’s Cameron Kealy.

“The treatment the Club provides is excellent, but I was having trouble with a persistent groin injury,” James said.

Applying the holistic osteopathic approach, Cameron focused on ensuring James’ body remained in balance.

“Instead of just trying to loosen up one particular area, we treat the whole body, looking for past injuries that haven’t been completely resolved,” Cameron said. “It’s the little things – a player might have a reoccurring groin problem, but it actually originates from issues in their neck, back and knee.”

The body of an AFL player endures a lot of physical strain over the course of a career. In particular, James’ back was quite stiff and tight from years of being knocked about, which was a focus of the osteopathic treatment.

“For the last two years of my footy I hardly had to see the physio at all,” James said.

Working in tandem with the Club’s physiotherapist, the osteopathic treatments meant James was able to keep playing despite his age.

“By keeping everything in balance, James was able to bounce back each week a lot better,” Cameron said. “Having accumulated so many knocks over so many years, we found a lot of tightness in other areas of his body where James didn’t think there was an issue. Addressing these made a big difference.”

Osteopathy is now a key component of James’ fitness routine.

“Cam’s given me a referral, so I’ll definitely be continuing osteopathic treatment up in Sydney.”

Sprained ankles often cause problems years after they are sprained and a lot of the time, these problems are not felt in your ankle!

A sprained ankle not only tears the ligaments in your ankle, but it also causes a myriad of alterations in the normal movement in the joints in your foot.  Now while the ligaments will heal up, you are often left with significant spasming in your foot and lower leg muscles and restriction in the movement through the foot joints that persists indefinitely…

…until someone treats them and loosens them up!

Your body adapts to these mechanical changes that sprained ankles cause very well, by twisting your knee, hip and low back slightly, and we don’t notice there is anything wrong until:

- your knee starts getting sore for no reason
- the knee on the side of the sprained ankle gets sore when you run
- your hip or low back on that side starts getting sore
- or many other leg, hip or low back problems start to emerge.

Many of these problems can pop up YEARS after the ankle was sprained.

These seemingly unrelated problems can all have their origins in a sprained ankle you did years ago.

That is why if you have a foot, knee or low back issue, it is always a good idea to look at the foot to see if an unresolved sprained ankle is setting up the problem.

The area where you feel pain is not always where the real problem is.  This is one of the key lessons that you learn as an Osteopath at uni, but occasionally you get a really clear example of it.

I had a lady come in my first year of practice with low back pain and extremely tight hamstrings.  She had fallen off a horse and hit her head on a rock 12 months earlier and the low back issues had started soon after that.

I treated her low back and mid back and upon retesting her movement she had a significant improvement in bending forward through her back.  Having said this though, she was still only bending JUST PAST HER KNEES.

I was going to end the treatment there, but I thought I’d quickly treat her NECK just for completeness.  I did so and on retesting her back SHE TOUCHED HER TOES – an extraordinary improvement!

The trauma through her neck from the fall 12 months earlier had locked up her spine from the top down, and this had resulted 12 months later in problems down the other end of the spine – her low back.

This case early on in my career really brought home for me how important what I had been taught at uni was about not just looking at the site of pain for problems.

I’ve since realized that it is very common for neck problems to cause ongoing problems in lower backs, but this is just one example of hundreds I could give of why treating a problem in the body requires looking at the WHOLE BODY to see where the real problems lie.