JOSPT Insights

If you work with athletes who play any of the football codes, or any field-based sport that involves high-speed running or kicking, you'll surely have hamstring and rectus femoris injuries at the front of your mind. Even if you're not in field-based sports, today's first episode in a 2-part series is a terrific opportunity to review your approach to managing thigh muscle injuries. We're taking a deep dive into best practice in rehabilitation planning. Part 1 explores the components of rehabilitation; part 2 covers the clinical pearls to help you design and deliver the most effective rehabilitation plans possible. Our guides are experienced Irish sports physiotherapists, Dermot Simpson and Simon Wallace, of the Aspetar Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha, Qatar.
Dermot has spent over 10 years at Aspetar, working with athletes from a range of sports. His clinical and research work is in thigh muscle and groin injuries. Simon applies his expertise to complex thigh muscle injuries, also calf and foot & ankle injuries. Before joining Aspetar, Simon worked for a decade in professional rugby. To learn more from Dermot and Simon, check out their new Reload-Ed platform.
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RESOURCES
Aspetar Hamstring Injury Rehabilitation Pathway: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptopen.2026.0213
Aspetar Rectus Femoris Injury Rehabilitation Pathway: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptopen.2026.0212

JOSPT Insights episodes often explore what well-functioning teams look like and how they function. Why? Well there's at least 2 important reasons:
Effective athlete centred care depends on the sports medicine, rehabilitation and performance team all co-ordinating to help the athlete get the best out of themselves.

Working in teams and leading those teams well is not about telling people what to do - it's about shaping the path and working together to achieve goals. Effective leaders shape the path and bring people along with them - they don't make it all about themselves.

Today's guest embodies those leadership qualities. Agnes Makowski is a registered International Sport Physiotherapist and has served as Chief Physiotherapy Advisor for Skate Canada since 2014. Agnes has extensive experience working in interdisciplinary teams and supporting athletes from the recreational level all the way to the pinnacle of Olympic performance. Today, Agnes shares her experiences and approaches to working in interdisciplinary teams.
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RESOURCES
Why screening tests to predict sport injury do not work: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27095747/
2022 Bern consensus on shoulder injury prevention, rehabilitation and return to sport: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2022.10952

The biopsychosocial model of health has been around since the late 1970s. In musculoskeletal rehabilitation, the biopsychosocial model is prominent in clinical practice guidelines for a variety of different conditions, with different approaches advocated for how to provide rehabilitation within the model.
Today, Dr Kate Jochimsen guides JOSPT Insights listeners through psychologically-informed rehabilitation practice - taking principles that have become quite prominent in the chronic low back pain field and seeing how they might apply to young, active people with chronic hip pain.
Dr Jochimsen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a researcher at the Center for Health Outcomes and Interdisciplinary Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a member of the Physical Therapy Residency Faculty at the MGH Institute for Health Professions. Her work bridges the gap between sports medicine and psychology, with a primary focus on chronic pain and hip injuries.
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RESOURCES
OSPRO yellow flags tool: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2016.6487
Screening for yellow flags - clinical framework: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2021.10570
Pain Catastrophizing Scale: https://www.sralab.org/rehabilitation-measures/pain-catastrophizing-scale
Association between pain and function in people with hip pain - systematic review: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41020468/
JOSPT's July 2026 hip-focused issue (10 hip articles): https://www.jospt.org/toc/jospt/56/7
Association for Applied Sport Psychology mental wellness resource center: https://appliedsportpsych.org/resources/mental-wellness-resource-center/
Why things hurt - TEDx with Professor Lorimer Moseley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs
Psychologically informed practice in low back pain (case report): https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptcases.2025.0177
Psychologically informed physical therapy for musculoskeletal conditions (APTA paid course): https://www.orthopt.org/course/33-3-psychologically-informed-physical-therapy-for-musculoskeletal-disorders
Managing persistent pain (APTA paid course): https://learningcenter.apta.org/products/persistent-pain-management-certificate-a-comprehensive-learning-series

We're often asking or answering the question "why?" in clinical practice. Why does it hurt? Why does this treatment give me relief? Why is the problem not getting better? Sometimes it's easy to answer why, and sometimes it's not.
In today's episode, Dr Damian Keter (US Department of Veterans Affairs) explores and explains musculoskeletal treatment mechanisms. Dr Keter suggests some ways to approach responding to the why question, even when the treatment mechanism isn't clear. He shares his perspectives on person-centered care and precision medicine.
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RESOURCES
Understanding musculoskeletal treatment mechanisms: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2026.14486
Person-centered care and modern manual therapy: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptopen.2023.0812
The case for treatment pluralism: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2026.13992
Sequenced care pathway vs. pain navigator pathway for veterans with low back pain: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41926124/

Returning to sport after an ACL injury is often framed around a single construct: fear of reinjury. But what if fear doesn't tell the whole story?
In today's episode, Chelsea and Marquis speak with Cobie Starcevich about her team's qualitative evidence synthesis exploring how athletes experience and interpret reinjury concerns after ACL injury.
The team's findings suggest that what clinicians commonly label as "fear of reinjury" is actually a much broader, nuanced experience encompassing altered beliefs, assessments of threat, behavioral and cognitive coping strategies, physiological sensations, and concerns about the future.
Cobie explains what the findings mean for clinicians, and how clinicians can move beyond fear and into exploring the multidimensional experiences of injury with patients.
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RESOURCES
Qualitative evidence synthesis of athletes' experience and interpretation of reinjury concerns after ACL injury: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2026.13852