Author: Keith Ward
I am excited to share news that our new multi-authored, second edition of the Handbook of Sports and Exercise Therapy has now been published. Designed to be appreciated by all in the field, whether student, lecturer or experienced practitioner, it has been produced by a team of 27 expert practitioners and university lecturers, and features 20 chapters and more than 500 illustrations over 1268 pages. It has ambitiously aimed to cover both foundational and specialised topics within a quite dynamic, contemporary landscape. Steadily, over the past 30 years, the field of sports and exercise therapy has grown and garnered increased recognition for its practitioners’ ability to provide practical, evidence-based support to athletes and teams, and for the general public. As stated by the Society of Sports Therapists (SST, 2024), a sports therapist:
“…is an allied health professional who has the knowledge, skills and ability to: utilise sports and exercise principles to optimise performance, preparation and injury prevention programmes; provide the immediate care of injuries and basic life support in a recreational, training, occupational and competitive environment; assess, treat, rehabilitate and, where and if appropriate, refer on for specialist advice and intervention; provide appropriate soft tissue interventions in a sport and exercise context; plan and implement appropriate rehabilitation and return to training or work programmes”.
The five so-called pillars or competencies of sports and exercise therapists are: prevention (of injury conditions); recognition and evaluation (assessment of athlete and patient injuries and conditions); management, treatment and referral; rehabilitation; and education and professionalism.
There is still work to be done to further the recognition and integration of sports and exercise therapists and sport rehabilitators, and given the opportunity, their work speaks for itself. This new handbook positions itself so as to provide evidence for what is expected of sports, exercise and rehabilitation practitioners, in terms of their scope of practice, educational and professional standards and responsibilities, specialised skill competencies, and what they can offer in sporting, rehabilitation, physical activity and health promotion settings.
In terms of content, the handbook covers the following topic areas:
- Learning and teaching in sports and exercise therapy
- Research and evidence-based practice
- Anatomy and physiology for sports and exercise therapy
- Aetiology and pathology of injuries, biomechanics, tissue healing and pain
- Clinical and remote assessment
- Therapeutic modalities
- Principles for injury rehabilitation
- Athlete measurement and evaluation
- Sports and exercise as medicine
- Sports and exercise nutrition
- Sports and exercise psychology
- Sideline sports injury management
- Management of regional injury conditions
- Case studies in sports and exercise therapy
- Professionalism and ethics
- Structural and cultural competency
- Employability and career development
The following image montage presents a tiny glimpse and set of extracts from each of our chapters. It is intended to illustrate the range and depth of our content.
Our approach has been less about ‘how to’ and more about ‘why, what and when’. We wanted to present the important foundational and background theory and principles for practice, alongside the experiential and evidence-based recommended strategies for achieving best practice. To learn more about the handbook, please visit the Routledge website here. To hear more from the editor about this new publication, please have a look at these YouTube videos: A short and snappy handbook promotion video, and An Interview with the Editor.
Author and Affiliations:
Keith Ward (BSc MA MSST CIMSPA PCRMMS) is an experienced therapist, lecturer and author. He has been in private practice (based in Cannock, Staffordshire, UK) since 1996, and for 15 years he taught on the SST accredited BSc Sports Therapy degree at University College Birmingham. He has published three books for the sports and exercise therapy field: Hands On Sports Therapy (Cengage, 2004); Handbook of Sports Therapy, Injury Assessment and Rehabilitation (Routledge, 2016); and the Handbook of Sports and Exercise Therapy (Routledge, 2024). He can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter as @keithward01.