When Should Athletes See a Physiotherapist?
Most athletes book a physiotherapy appointment after something has gone wrong. The more useful answer to this question is that there are four situations worth coming in for, and only one of them involves an obvious injury: pain that has not settled within a couple of weeks, a drop in performance you cannot explain, a history of the same injury recurring, and the period before a season starts when you want to reduce the odds of getting hurt at all.
Waiting for something to become clearly wrong is the most common approach, and usually the least efficient one.
1. Pain that has not settled in two weeks
Soreness after hard training is normal and generally fades within a few days. Pain that is still present two weeks later is telling you something different — that the tissue is not adapting to the load it is being given.
The two-week mark is a reasonable trigger for assessment. Training through pain beyond that point tends to change how you move, which spreads the problem to structures that were previously fine. A calf issue becomes a hip issue because you have been compensating for a month.
Worth noting: pain does not have to be severe to be worth assessing. Persistent low-grade discomfort that you have been working around is exactly the kind of thing that resolves quickly early and becomes stubborn late.
2. Performance has dropped and you cannot explain why
Sometimes the first sign of a developing problem is not pain but performance. You cannot hold your usual pace. Your jump feels flat. One side feels noticeably weaker than the other. Your stride feels off without hurting.
These are worth taking seriously, because restrictions in movement or strength deficits often show up in performance before they show up as symptoms. An assessment can identify whether something mechanical is behind it — which is a considerably better outcome than discovering the cause when it finally becomes painful.
3. The same injury keeps coming back
Recurring injuries are among the clearest signals that something upstream has not been addressed. An ankle that keeps rolling, a hamstring that strains every season, a shoulder that flares up each time you build volume — these patterns rarely resolve through rest alone, because rest treats the episode rather than the cause.
Previous injury is one of the better-established risk factors for future injury in the same area. If you are on your third episode of the same problem, the useful question is not how to settle this one but what is allowing it to keep happening.
4. Before the season, not during it
This is the appointment almost nobody books, and the one with the best evidence behind it.
Exercise-based injury prevention programs — typically combining balance, strength, plyometric and landing-control work — have been studied extensively. A meta-analysis of sixteen trials found neuromuscular training was associated with an overall injury risk reduction of around 42% in youth athletes, and a 2025 review of twenty-four studies reported a 27% reduction in lower extremity injuries. In female team-sport athletes, one meta-analysis found neuromuscular training reduced knee injury risk by 22% and ACL injury risk by around 50%.
The dosage required is modest. The strongest effects came from sessions of roughly 10 to 30 minutes, performed two to three times per week. What mattered most was not program complexity but adherence — completing at least 75% of sessions was the single most important factor.
In other words: a short, consistent routine done properly outperforms a sophisticated one done occasionally. A physiotherapist can build that around your sport and any previous injuries.
What an assessment looks like
A sports assessment examines how you move, not just where it hurts. Expect testing of joint range, strength through the kinetic chain, balance and control, and movement patterns relevant to your sport. If you are dealing with a current injury, you will get an explanation and a plan. If you are there preventatively, you will leave with a program targeting your specific vulnerabilities.
You can read more on our sports injury rehabilitation page, and we have sport-specific information for hockey, pickleball, and running. For persistent tendon problems, shockwave therapy is sometimes used alongside a loading program.
Booking in
Whether you are working around a niggle, coming back from something more significant, or want to get ahead of the season, our physiotherapists in Newmarket can help. Call (905) 235-5360 or get in touch. We work with athletes across Newmarket and York Region.
