™
Email hello@splash.physio
Phone (03) 4422 2970
Aquatic and land physiotherapy for babies, children & young people
Get on your bike!
Choose a trike or a bike, we'll help get you moving!
Bike riding can be an important skill for children, young adults, and adults
Our Splash Physiotherapy team loves to help you get moving on your bike.
Bike riding is great for:
-
participation in bike riding with your family, friends, at kinder, and moving around your community
-
exercise as a child and as an adult
-
development of balance, strength, coordination
-
developing skills that have carryover to your other goals
We can help with:
-
choosing the bike style that will give you the "just right challenge" at the moment
-
helping with bike trials and funding applications where appropriate
-
physiotherapy sessions to learn bike skills
-
home practise suggestions for you to continue with your family
-
some children and young adults have support workers take them bike riding regularly. We can set up a program and provide training to the support workers.
Modified bikes
We love to work with you to identify the type of bike that will help you have success straight away.
We work closely with Body Cycles who are a fantastic Australian company, custom making bikes to order
We support you with funding applications for these bikes, as well as fit out and learning to use them.
They have a full range including: tricycles, modified tricycles with supports, electric bicycles, hand cycles. (We are not an affiliate, we just like their products!)
We can support your choice of bike to find the
"just right challenge"
for you at the moment.
Two wheeled bicycles
Some children and young people use training wheels on off the shelf bicycles before riding an off the shelf bicycle.
Some children and young people ride modified two wheeled bicycles, eg with pedals that help keep your feet in place, modified grips, larger seats to make balancing easier.
Tricycles & balance bikes- children
Sometimes off the shelf tricycles are perfect to learn pedalling and steering, and to get some power and fitness.
We often look at when to introduce balance bikes to learn balance on 2 wheels as well.
Modified tricycles & bicycles for children & adults
Sometimes children and young adults continue on tricycles as they offer excellent stability to keep up with their peers and access the community.
The Tigermoth is a side - by - side bicycle, allowing parallel riding for two people.
Body Cycles also has electric bikes, hand cycles, and many accessories to help make bike riding accessible for everyone.
We use our holistic approach to learning bike riding skills
Splash Physiotherapy is passionate about:
-
using family centred practice
-
employing a play based approach
-
basing our practise upon strengths based philosophy
-
combining contemporary Neuro Developmental Treatment (NDT/ Bobath) with motor learning and sensory integration approaches to paediatric physiotherapy
-
working towards participation goals
We work hard to find the "just right challenge' for you at this moment in time, so you can be engaged in the learning process, feel the challenge, and have some success.
Learning to ride a bike is a complex skill using multiple systems, and we carefully analyse how you are going moment by moment, to help you put it all together.
This article talks more about our approach & outcome measures we use
We help you put your bike riding skills into participating in their everyday life
Participation is key:
We employ a "top down" approach based on the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Function for Children and Youth (ICF-CY).
For bike riding, a example might be: (summary only)
-
participation: going on a family bike ride on the weekends
-
activity: wheeling bike, helmet on and off, climbing on and off the bike, getting started on flat ground and slopes, riding on flat ground, slopes and different surfaces, steering and changing directions, using different speeds, awareness of the path and / or road rules
-
body functions and structures: this is very individual. This might include systems such as: balance, leg strength, cardiovascular endurance, attention, motor planning, using vision to see where you are going, hand grip. (*simplified list only. Individualised assessment identifies specific areas to be addressed for each child, alongside their strengths)
-
environmental factors: eg. bike type and size, the surface you are riding on, the people supporting you
-
personal factors: eg. being eager to learn to ride like your big brother, but hesitant after a previous fall
We can do bike riding intensives or physiotherapy blocks
-
bike riding intensives can be great to build on your skills each day and achieve a goal over a week. Read more about intensives for sports & recreation here, usually done over the school holidays.
-
we can work on bike riding during a block of weekly land physiotherapy sessions. Some practise between each sessions helps carryover of skills so they can be built on the next week. Complete a booking request and flag that you are keen to work on bike riding!
Get your bike ready!
-
you bring your own bike to our sessions
Find out more!
-
find out more about how our sports and recreation intensives work here
