Sports Chiropractor in Canberra
Sports injury care is a genuine strength of our chiropractic services, led by Dr Samantha Teoh, whose special interest is sporting injury, alongside Dr Timothy Porter. From parkrun tweaks to competitive season setbacks, we assess what actually went wrong, treat it properly and build a return-to-play plan around your calendar rather than a generic timeline. Runners, team-sport players and weekend gym athletes all find a practical, honest home here, treated by people who understand that sitting still is not an acceptable cure.
Mid-season and worried? Call (02) 6288 6711
Sports Injury Care Led by a Special-Interest Chiropractor
Dr Samantha Teoh holds a special interest in sporting injuries and leads sports care at the practice, working alongside Dr Timothy Porter. Both are AHPRA registered chiropractors, and their sports work combines hands-on treatment with the load and training advice that actually prevents the same injury returning.
A special interest is not a marketing phrase here; it is the difference between treating an injury and understanding a sport. When your practitioner already knows what a fast bowler's action asks of a lower back, why a runner's calf tears in the last third of a long run, or how a poor overhead position feeds a cranky shoulder, the assessment gets to the real problem faster and the advice actually fits your training. Dr Samantha Teoh brings a background that also includes a pharmacy qualification, which means the full picture of your recovery, medications included, is considered rather than skimmed.
What sets sports care apart from general treatment is the goal. You are not simply trying to be pain-free on the couch; you are trying to get back to a specific activity, at a specific intensity, ideally by a specific date. That changes everything about how the injury is managed, from how quickly load is reintroduced to how the plan is timed around your next event. It is care built for people who intend to keep moving, not to stop, and that intent shapes every decision from the first appointment to the last.
Both chiropractors treat sporting injuries, so you are never dependent on a single practitioner's diary. Dr Porter shares the sports caseload and the same evidence-led approach, which matters when an injury flares the day before a game and you need to be seen quickly. Between them, and with the massage team alongside, the practice can turn a worried mid-season phone call into a same-week plan more often than not.
It helps, too, that this is a clinic with fifty-plus years of watching Canberra bodies train, break and rebuild. Sports science has moved a long way in that time, and the practice has moved with it: the days of prescribing rest for everything are long gone, replaced by the active, load-managed approach the evidence now supports. Old enough to know the patterns, current enough to treat them the modern way, is a fair summary of what you are actually booking.
Which Sports Injuries Do We Treat?
We manage the musculoskeletal injuries that come with training and competition: the joint, muscle and tendon problems that respond to hands-on care and smart load management. Where something needs imaging, a surgeon or a specific rehabilitation specialist, we say so and refer, because honest scoping is part of getting you back safely. The categories below cover the injuries we see most, though bodies rarely read the list and plenty arrive with a combination.
Running injuries
Calf and hamstring strains, shin pain, cranky knees and the hip and lower-back niggles that build across a training block. Common in Canberra's enormous running community, and often as much about load as about the sore spot itself.
Shoulder and overhead
Swimmers, throwers, racquet and gym athletes whose shoulders trade stability for range. We assess the whole chain feeding the joint, and the shoulder pain treatment guide covers the detail.
Hip and groin
Footballers, cyclists and anyone with a deep, hard-to-pin ache around the hip. Assessment separates joint, muscle and referred sources, with more in the hip pain treatment guide.
Lower back
The rotational sports, cricket, golf, tennis, and the heavy lifters, all load the lumbar spine in demanding ways. We treat the restriction and coach the pattern that caused it.
Neck and mid back
Cyclists holding a position for hours, rowers, and desk-bound athletes whose day job undoes their training. Often the quiet driver behind shoulder and headache trouble too.
General overload
The grab-bag of tightness, restriction and fatigue that comes from ramping up too fast. Not a dramatic injury, but the one most likely to become one if ignored.
One reassurance for the anxious athlete: the vast majority of what walks through our door is treatable, manageable and temporary, not the catastrophe the 2am internet search suggested. The assessment exists precisely to tell the ordinary strain apart from the rare serious problem, and to get you moving again on solid ground either way. If your injury is not on this list, it almost certainly still fits somewhere; book the assessment and we will place it properly.
How We Assess a Sports Injury
Assessment starts with the story: the sport, the training load, exactly when and how it hurts, and what you are aiming to get back to. A physical examination then tests movement, strength and the joints and muscles involved, so the plan targets the cause rather than chasing the symptom around your body.
The where-does-it-hurt question is the least interesting one. Far more useful is what changed: the sudden jump in weekly kilometres, the new pair of shoes, the tournament that stacked five matches into a weekend, the gym program that added load faster than tissue could adapt. Sports injuries are usually load problems wearing the costume of a sore spot, and an assessment that ignores the training history treats the costume.
We also test rather than assume. Movement screening, strength comparison side to side, and hands-on assessment of the joints in the chain all build a picture of why this tissue failed now. That picture is what lets us give you a plan you can act on, not just a diagnosis you can google, and it is why two runners with identical calf strains can leave with quite different instructions.
Red flags get screened here as carefully as anywhere in the practice. A muscle strain that behaves oddly, a joint that gives way, numbness or weakness rather than honest muscular pain, or a mechanism that suggests a fracture all change the plan immediately, usually towards imaging or a specialist opinion before any hands-on treatment. Getting an athlete back quickly is the goal; getting them back on a missed serious injury is a failure, and the assessment is built to catch the difference.
You will also leave the first visit understanding your own injury, which is more valuable to an athlete than most realise. Knowing why the calf tore, what stage of healing it is in, and which sensations mean progress versus setback turns you into an active participant in your own recovery rather than a passenger waiting to be fixed. That understanding is deliberately part of the assessment, not an afterthought.
Treatment: Adjusting, Soft Tissue and Load Advice
Sports treatment combines three things: adjusting to restore joint motion, soft tissue work to release the muscles guarding the injury, and load advice so you return to training at a rate the tissue can handle. The mix is set by your examination, and the load advice is the part that stops the injury coming back.
The hands-on half of treatment is what most people picture. Adjusting restores movement to joints that have stiffened around or because of the injury; soft tissue and, where useful, dry needling or cupping through the massage side of the practice release the muscles doing the protective guarding. Both help you feel and move better, and for an acute problem they are genuinely valuable.
But the half that decides whether you are back here in a month is the load advice. Returning to full training the moment pain eases is the single most common way athletes re-injure themselves, so we map out how to reintroduce volume and intensity in steps the healing tissue can actually tolerate. That might mean a fortnight of reduced mileage with specific strength work, or swapping one session type for another while a joint settles. It is less glamorous than a good adjustment and it matters more.
Strength work earns a specific mention because athletes so often skip it. An injured area almost always loses strength and control, and simply waiting for pain to fade leaves that deficit in place, which is exactly why the injury so often returns on the first hard session back. The rebuild stage, targeted, progressive strengthening of the injured region and the chain around it, is not optional padding; it is the part that converts feeling better into being genuinely resilient under load. We prescribe it as carefully as any hands-on treatment.
None of this is done to you in isolation, either. A good sports plan is a collaboration: you report how sessions feel, we adjust the load and the treatment in response, and the plan flexes as you heal. Athletes are, by temperament, motivated and honest about their bodies, which makes them excellent patients to work with, and the plan leans on that partnership rather than issuing instructions and hoping something sticks.
When Can You Return to Play?
When the tissue has healed enough to handle the demand, not when the pain first stops. Return is guided by function, whether you can produce the strength, range and control your sport needs, tested rather than guessed. Rushing it is how a two-week problem becomes a two-month one.
- Settle. Calm the acute injury with treatment and a short, sensible reduction in load. Pain easing here is a start, not a green light.
- Rebuild. Restore the strength, range and control the injured area lost, with targeted work. This is the stage athletes skip and regret.
- Reload. Reintroduce sport-specific demand in graded steps, testing that the tissue holds up under each before adding the next.
- Return. Back to full play once function meets the demand of your sport, with a plan to keep the injury from recurring.
The honest truth is that return-to-play dates are estimates that flex with how you heal, and we would rather give you an accurate moving target than a comforting fixed one you beat by re-tearing something. If a specific event matters, tell us early and we will build the plan around it, including the frank conversation if the timeline is genuinely too tight to be safe.
That frank conversation is worth expecting rather than dreading. Occasionally an athlete arrives wanting to play through something that genuinely should not be played through, and the responsible answer is to say so, explain why, and map the shortest safe route back instead. It is not the popular answer in the moment, but a re-torn hamstring three minutes into a comeback game costs far more than a fortnight of patience, and most athletes, once the reasoning is laid out, agree.
Where a return is realistic, the plan gives you markers to hit rather than a date to wait for: the run you should complete pain-free, the strength test you should pass, the training session you should tolerate before the next step. Hitting those markers is what earns the green light, and it puts the timeline partly back in your own hands, which athletes tend to appreciate.
Working With Canberra Athletes: Stromlo, Parkrun and Local Clubs
We treat athletes from right across Canberra's sporting community: trail runners off Stromlo Forest Park, the Saturday parkrun crowd, cyclists, triathletes, and players from local footy, netball, cricket and hockey clubs. Knowing the local scene means the advice fits the events and terrain you actually train on.
Canberra is a genuinely sporty town, and the injuries that come through our door reflect it. Stromlo's climbs and descents produce their own pattern of knee and calf complaints; the flat, fast parkrun courses tempt runners into pace jumps their legs have not earned; the winter football and hockey seasons deliver their reliable crop of ankles, hips and shoulders. Treating this community for decades means we recognise these patterns quickly.
It also means the practical advice lands. When we suggest easing off before the City to Surf or a club grand final, or adjusting a training block around a Stromlo event, it comes from knowing the local calendar rather than a generic textbook. And because the clinic runs Saturday mornings, the appointment rarely costs you a session or a game.
We are also realistic about where chiropractic sits in an athlete's support team. For many injuries it is the primary care that gets you back; for others it works best alongside a coach adjusting your program, a physiotherapist running a specific rehabilitation protocol, or a GP managing something medical. We are happy in any of those roles and will say plainly which one suits your situation. The point is your return to sport, not our ownership of it.
Free parking directly opposite the clinic is a small thing that athletes on tight schedules genuinely value, as is the location a short drive from most of Canberra's southside sporting venues and trails. The practical friction of getting treated is kept as low as the clinical care is kept high, because an injury plan only works if you can actually make the appointments.
How Sports Massage Fits In
Sports massage runs alongside sports chiropractic on the same patient file, timed around your training and events. It releases the muscle load that joint work alone cannot reach, supports recovery between hard sessions, and is coordinated with your chiropractor so the two treatments build on each other rather than overlap.
Muscles and joints fail together and recover together, so treating them in one place is a real advantage for an athlete. Your chiropractor might send you to the massage team to release a chronically tight calf between adjustments, or your therapist might flag a joint that is not moving well for chiropractic review. Because it is all one file in one building, the timing is deliberate: deeper work in a lighter training week, lighter flushing close to an event, nothing left to chance, and nothing lost to a referral letter posted to a clinic across town.
The details of pre-event, post-event and maintenance timing live on our sports massage page, but the principle is simple. Adjusting keeps the joints moving, massage keeps the muscles supple, load advice keeps you honest about how fast to return, and the three together are considerably more than the sum of their parts. Book the assessment, and we will work out which combination your body and your season actually need.
For patients juggling both, the shared-file setup removes the usual annoyances: no repeating your history to a stranger, no two clinics giving contradictory advice, no guessing whether the massage and the adjustment are working with or against each other. Your chiropractor and therapist can quite literally compare notes over a coffee, and your plan reads as one coherent story rather than two competing ones. For a busy athlete juggling training, work and a season that does not pause for injuries, that coordination saves real time as well as improving the result, which is exactly why so many local competitors keep both sides of the practice on speed dial.
Book With Dr Teoh for a Sports Injury Assessment
Tell us the sport, the injury and the date that matters, and we will build the plan around all three. Booking takes under a minute, or reach the front desk on (02) 6288 6711 to ask about timing around your season.
1/43 Brierly St, Weston ACT 2611 · Saturday mornings available