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Luke is an Australian Sports Physiotherapist whose career spans some of the biggest codes in Australian sport having worked with the likes of Rugby Australia (Rugby Sevens), GWS Giants (AFL) and Sydney FC (A-League). Currently he is a senior physiotherapist for the world renowned Aspetar, where he plays a pivotal role in their knee injury division which services elite athletes from across the globe with an ACLR re-injury success rate of less than 5%. In this conversation we chat about all thing’s injury management as well as his move from pro sport in Australia to living in the middle east and working with the world-leading specialised orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital shaping high performance care across various sports and athletes. 

Highlights from the episode…

• Why Luke early on persevere with receiving low pay, long hours, extra work just to pursue a chance of a career in sports. 
• Acquiring his role at GWS Giants and how most practitioners are doing it all wrong when trying to get their foot in the door of pro sport. 
• Having never played/worked in AFL how Luke gained the knowledge and skills to effectively develop and deliver rehab programs at the highest level of a unfamiliar sport. 
• When developing a rehab plan for an athlete, Luke has established a “Drill Library” and discuss how he built this and utilises it. 
• The importance of understanding “what” needs to be communicated and “how” coaches, players, colleagues etc. like to be comminated too.
• Working at Aspetar, Luke shares some of the world class facilities, calibre staff and the comprehensive approaches they take to injury management. 
• Although an incredible opportunity to be chosen to work for Aspetar, Luke vulnerably shares the conversations and considerations he had to make as a father and a husband before making the final decision to move Qatar. 
• With the experienced gained in his career as far what things would he do differently when it comes to rehabbing an athlete back to Return-to-Sport (RTS). 
• Luke shares some the milestones to determine progression in an athletes rehab/RTS decision making and we discuss how much weight should practitioners put on these milestones and when they can be ignored and when they should be non-negotiable. 
• When it comes to injury prevention, we debate over the importance of needing symmetrical, clean, efficient biomechanics, or can athletes inevitably overcome any biomechanical inefficiencies and develop reasonable adaptations that inevitably make them robust?  

People mentioned:

• Matt Cameron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-cameron-phd/?originalSubdomain=au
• Nalesh Murti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nalesh-murti-845008b9/?originalSubdomain=au
• Nick Walsh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-walsh-3ba07139/details/experience/
• Alex Natera: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-natera-035a7765/
• Roula Kotsifaki: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roula-Kotsifaki

 

Luke Heath contact details: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-heath-8b015795/
• HPRS Physio Website: https://www.hprsphysio.com.au/who-we-are
• Aspetar ACL protocol: https://aspetar.com/en/professionals/aspetar-clinical-guidelines/acl-rehabilitation-protocol

Host: Luis Resa

Contact me on:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-resa-a975196b/
• Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening and please leave a review. If you would like more information on anything mentioned in this episode simply send me an email.