Tania Althorpe - Specialist sports and exercise physiotherapist

Tania Althorpe is a Specialist Sports and Exercise Physiotherapist, placed in the top 0.5% of Physiotherapists in Australia. Tania combines her extensive clinical experience and the best available research evidence to provide a practical approach to Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy. She is passionate about keeping her clients engaged in all levels and types of activity, for physical and mental wellbeing and performance.

Specialist areas include:

• Shoulder pain
• Hip and groin
• Hamstring injuries
• Elbows
• Athletics
• Adolescent athletes and management through physical development stages
• Peri and menopausal woman and the implications for physical activity
• Running
• Hockey

Her professional roles include:

• Specialist Sports and Exercise Physiotherapist and Clinical Practice Director at West Coast Physiotherapy, Perth, Australia. Tania works clinically with elite to everyday athletes to manage injuries and return to sport. This enables her to present highly practical and real-life management of injury that you can apply to your clinical case load. She treats a wide range of presentations and clients from junior to senior elite and active people.

o Adolescent and developing athletes
o Shoulder pain and instability
o Knee pain and instability, including patellofemoral pain
o Recovery from bone stress injuries
o High-level rehabilitation to sport and activity

• Olympic Physiotherapist, Physiotherapist for Australian Athletics. Tania works with able body, ParaAthletes and emerging athletes. She has travelled to the Parsi Olympics 2024 and World Athletics Championships 2022 in Oregon, USA as part of the Australian team and to Nice, France in 2023 as resident Physiotherapist for the Australian Athletics team training base. She is passionate about helping develop injury resilience in athletes of all levels as they grow from a junior to adult athlete – elite or recreational.

• Senior Lecturer at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia on the Clinical Master of Physiotherapy, educating Physiotherapists to become titled Sports and Musculoskeletal Physiotherapists. Key lectures that Tania delivers include shoulder pain and instability, elbow, hip and groin, knee pain, muscle injuries, tendinopathy and foot and ankle and the adolescent athlete.

• Lectures nationally and internationally to Physiotherapists providing professional development and clinical expertise. Tania teaches 2-4 days courses on Physiotherapy assessment, management and return to sport within Australia and internationally in Malaysia, China and Reunion Island.

• Professional roles have included:

Physiotherapist at Western Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS) working with Olympic, National level and emerging athletes.

o Head WAIS Physiotherapist for Athletics
o Head WAIS Physiotherapist for Hockey

Both WAIS roles involved working as part of the high performance team to develop athletes to the National level. In this role, Tania worked closely with coaches, strength and conditioning coaches and as part of a multidisciplinary team for elite athlete management.