Physiotherapy for Tradies and Manual Workers in Adelaide

• Lower back from lifting, twisting and bending, often a strain that would settle with the right advice and goes bad with the wrong rest.
• Shoulder from overhead work: rotator cuff irritation, impingement, and the slower-building tendon problems of plasterers, painters and electricians.
• Knee from kneeling and squatting: tilers, floorers, carpet layers, mechanics.
• Elbow and wrist from gripping and vibrating tools: tennis elbow in people who have never held a racquet.
• Neck from looking up at ceilings, or down into engine bays, for hours.
• Falls and sudden injuries: ankle sprains off ladders and scaffolds, and the rehab after a fracture has healed.

The assessment looks at what the job actually asks of you, with the actual weights, reaches and hours, not a generic "avoid heavy lifting". Treatment settles the pain and restores the movement, and the rehab is built around the tasks you need back: the lift, the overhead reach, the kneel. We are specific about what you can do now and what you cannot, so you and your employer can plan the week rather than guess.

For most muscle and joint injuries the evidence says a graded return to modified duties beats staying off until you are fully better, and the longer someone is away from work the harder returning gets. We write capacities your boss can roster around.

A work injury in South Australia is covered by ReturnToWorkSA. Once the claim is accepted, bring your claim number, your employer's details and your referral. We prepare the physiotherapy management plan the scheme requires, with specific, measurable goals, and report progress against them. The work injury page explains the process. If there is no claim, or the injury built up over years rather than happening on a day, treatment is a standard private appointment, claimable on health fund extras, and your GP can refer you under a care plan for anything persistent, which we bulk bill with no gap.

• A back or shoulder that "goes" more than once a year.
• Pain that is there at the start of the shift, not just the end.
• You have changed how you lift or reach to work around it.
• Numbness, pins and needles or weakness in a limb.
• An injury from a fall or a lift that is not improving after a week.

Tradies tend to wait. The ones who come in early are back on the tools fastest.

Most trade injuries are not one bad lift. They are a body that was not strong enough for the job, doing the job anyway. The last part of rehab is strength work aimed at exactly that, in the clinic or in a gym-based program, and it is the part people skip. Finish it and the back that went this year is far less likely to go next year.