The Cape Winelands are a playground for active people. Trail runners on the mountains above Franschhoek, cyclists climbing out of Paarl towards Val de Vie, padel and golf courts and courses filling up every weekend, and an ever-growing Hyrox community pushing strength and endurance to their limits. Wherever you fall on that spectrum — weekend warrior, weekly club player, or competitive athlete — sport puts real demands on the body, and those demands sometimes lead to pain or injury.
Working with sport is at the heart of what we do at Alderslade Physiotherapy. We work alongside professional athletes and sports teams as well as everyday sportspeople across Franschhoek, Paarl and Val de Vie Estateand our approach is the same for everyone: understand the demands of your sport, address the root cause of the problem, and help you get back to doing what you love — stronger and more resilient than before.
Here’s a closer look at how we support some of the sports we see most often.
Running: From First 5km to Two Oceans
Running is one of the simplest sports to start — and one of the easiest to get injured in if training load builds up too quickly. Around 80% of running-related issues come down to overload: tendons and ligaments adapt slowly, and when training volume increases faster than the body can keep up, something has to give. The most common areas affected are the knees, lower legs, and feet.
The good news is that overuse injuries respond well to an individualised approach — understanding why the injury happened, not just treating where it hurts. That might mean targeted treatment, a progressive return to training load, and a mobility and strength programme built around your specific stride and goals.
If you’re training for one of the big Cape events — Two Oceans, for example, whether you’re tackling the 21km or the full 56km — physiotherapy has a role to play well before race day. Building mobility and strength into your programme can improve performance and reduce injury risk, while post-race recovery is just as important as the training itself: helping the body rebuild, easing soreness, and catching small issues before they become bigger ones.
Cycling: Built for the Long Ride
Between Franschhoek, Paarl, and the surrounding Winelands, cycling is part of daily life — and long hours in the saddle bring their own pattern of complaints. Neck pain, lower back stiffness, knee discomfort, and hand or wrist pain are all common, often linked to repetitive motion and bike setup rather than any single injury.
This is one area where physiotherapy and bike fitting genuinely overlap. A correctly set up bike — saddle height and position, handlebar reach, pedal and cleat alignment — can prevent a huge proportion of overuse problems before they start. We’re happy to work alongside your bike fitter, helping identify where current issues are coming from or where you’re likely to develop one, while also providing the strengthening, mobility, and taping support that keeps you comfortable and efficient on the bike.
If you’re building up to a major event — the Absa Cape Epic or the Cape Town Cycle Tour are two that come to mind — getting your body event-ready is just as important as getting your bike race-ready. Addressing muscle imbalances, preventing overuse injuries, and improving recovery and efficiency all add up on race day.
Golf: Seven Phases, Many Opportunities for Injury
Golf might look gentle, but the golf swing is a complex, repetitive movement with real potential to strain the spine, shoulders, wrists, and lower limbs if it isn’t well supported. The swing itself can be broken down into seven distinct phases, and each one carries its own injury risks — which is exactly why a proper movement assessment matters.
The most common problem areas in golfers tend to be the lower limb — hips, knees, ankles and feet — alongside the more familiar complaints like golfer’s elbow. At Alderslade Physiotherapy, we assess your swing and build strategies around it: not just treating pain when it shows up, but reducing the risk of it returning, so you can stay on the course for years to come. A simple golf-specific mobility routine — focused on hip rotation, thoracic mobility, and overall swing-supporting movement — can make a meaningful difference to both comfort and consistency.
Padel: The Fast-Growing Game with a Fast-Growing Injury List
Padel has exploded in popularity across the Winelands, and with it has come a now-familiar list of padel-specific injuries: Achilles tendinitis from all that running and jumping, rotator cuff tendinitis from repetitive overhead and swinging motions, wrist injuries from fast reactive shots and falls, lower back pain from the sport’s demanding posture, calf strains from explosive movement, and — most common of all — tennis elbow (epicondylitis), caused by repetitive stress on the forearm from forceful hits.
The encouraging part is that most of these are genuinely preventable. A proper warm-up, correct technique, well-fitted equipment, and a strength and flexibility programme built around padel’s specific demands — legs for stability, core for posture and back protection, shoulders and arms for power, wrists and forearms for control — go a long way. And if something does start niggling, early attention makes a real difference to how quickly and completely it resolves.
Hyrox and Functional Fitness: Train Hard, Train with Structure
Hyrox has brought a new combination of demands to the Winelands fitness scene — high-intensity running paired with functional strength work, often at volume. It’s a brilliant test of fitness, but it also places repeated load on the hips, trunk, lower limbs, and posterior chain, particularly as fatigue sets in.
Most injuries in this space aren’t sudden — they build up over time, as training load increases faster than the body can adapt, recovery falls short, or movement quality breaks down under fatigue. The goal isn’t to train less; it’s to train with structure: a proper warm-up that activates the right muscles and prepares the joints, attention to hip stability, thoracic mobility, and trunk control, and early attention to any persistent soreness, tendon discomfort, or dip in performance before it becomes a setback.
Common Threads: Ankles, Elbows, and the Tools We Use
A few injuries show up again and again across almost every sport we see.
Ankle sprains are one of the most common sporting injuries there is — the ankle is the second most frequently injured joint in sport, and sprains happen when one or more of the ankle ligaments are stretched or torn. The earlier proper rehabilitation begins after a sprain (once anything more serious has been ruled out), the lower the chance of it happening again. Management typically combines the classic RICE approach (rest, ice, compression, elevation), taping or bracing, hands-on manual therapy, and a progressive return to weight-bearing and strengthening exercises.
Elbow pain — particularly tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) and golfer’s elbow (medial epicondylitis) — is another frequent visitor, especially among padel, tennis, and golf players. Both tend to come on gradually, without any single dramatic injury, which is exactly why they’re often left too long before being addressed. The elbow itself is a three-joint complex, and a thorough assessment can identify exactly which structures are involved — whether that’s a ligament sprain, tendon overuse, or something else entirely — so treatment can be tailored to your specific injury and your sporting goals.
Across all of these, our toolkit includes taping (to support, de-load, and protect injured structures while keeping you moving well), extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) and high-power laser therapy (both excellent for stubborn tendon issues like tennis and golfer’s elbow), and individualised exercise programmes that build strength and resilience around the specific demands of your sport.
Stay in the Game
Sport should add to your life, not take you out of it. Whether you’re recovering from an injury, trying to prevent one, or simply want to perform at your best, our team across Franschhoek, Paarl and Val de Vie Estate has the experience — including work with professional athletes and sports teams — to help you train hard, recover well, and stay in the game for the long run.
