Cammeray Chiropractic & Performance Centre

Cammeray Chiropractic & Performance Centre Dr Andrew Richards (B.Med.Sc M.Chiro)
27 years private clinical practice specialising in functional orthopaedics and sports performance

Well Aligned Cammeray is a chiropractic practice operating in Cammeray NSW. We offer treatment for spinal and sports injuries, back and neck pain, shoulder elbow and wrist, pelvic, hip, knee, ankle and foot injuries, sciatica, spinal disc, posture and scoliosis, headache and migraine, nerve pain, pre and post natal care, exercise rehabilitation and balance re-training and healthy children's develo

pment. We service Cammeray and surrounding suburbs such as Northbridge, Neutral Bay, Cremorne, Mosman, Crows nest, Naremburn, Willoughby, Wollstonecraft, Greenwich, Artarmon, North Sydney, Kirribilli, St Leonards, Castlecrag and various suburbs in Sydney's Lower North Shore. If you are looking for the best chiropractor in Cammeray, look no further.

13/06/2026

Why I love the Step-Up Hop for runners 👇

A standard step-up is a great strength exercise, but running isn’t just a strength exercise—it’s a force absorption and force production exercise.

What makes this variation different is that we don’t start with the foot on the box. We hold the hip in flexion and then aggressively drive the foot down onto the platform.

That means the leg has to absorb load, control load, and then immediately produce force to drive the body upward.

Sound familiar?

That’s exactly what happens every time your foot hits the ground when running.

Adding the hop at the top further increases the plyometric demand, teaching the body to store and release elastic energy more efficiently.

I also like the increased hip flexion position because it places greater demand on the glutes, quads, and hip extensors—all critical muscles for running performance.

Unlike simple pogo hops that focus mostly on the ankle, this is a full-body running drill. It integrates ground contact mechanics, hip extension, knee drive, arm swing, balance, and coordination.

The goal isn’t just to get stronger.

The goal is to become better at handling the loads of running.

Strength builds capacity.
Plyometrics teach you how to use it.
Running performance requires both.

29/05/2026

Here’s a concise Instagram-style post:

One of the biggest mistakes runners make is trying to run with walking mechanics.

When we walk, a heel strike is completely normal. Walking has no flight phase, lower impact forces, and different mechanical demands.

Running is a different skill altogether.

Every time you run, you’re briefly airborne. That means your body has to absorb significantly greater forces when you return to the ground. The most efficient way to do that is by landing with the foot underneath your centre of mass and allowing the ankle, arch, Achilles tendon, and calf complex to act like a spring.

A heavy heel strike out in front of the body bypasses much of this natural shock-absorbing system. It increases braking forces, reduces elastic energy storage, and makes it harder to recycle energy into forward propulsion.

Think of it this way: your foot and lower leg are designed to function like a spring, not a hammer.

Good running mechanics help you absorb force, store energy, create forward momentum, and reduce unnecessary stress on your joints and tissues. The result? Better efficiency, better performance, and often a lower risk of injury.

Walk like a walker. Run like a runner.

26/05/2026

One of the most fascinating things about the nervous system is that structures don’t just stop working because they’re damaged — they can stop working properly because the brain stops hearing from them clearly.

Think about what would happen if you patched one eye closed for a long period of time. The eye itself is still there. The retina still exists. The hardware hasn’t disappeared. But over time, because the brain is no longer receiving clear sensory input from that eye, the neural pathways responsible for processing that information begin to “go to sleep.” When you finally remove the patch, vision is often blurry, poorly coordinated, lacking clarity and depth perception until the system is retrained.

Joints behave in a very similar way.

When a joint becomes stiff, locked up, inflamed, or chronically underused, it loses high-quality movement and sensory input into the brain. The mechanoreceptors in the joint stop sending clean, accurate information. Over time, the brain’s awareness, control, and coordination of that area diminish. The system effectively becomes neurologically “asleep.”

This is why dysfunctional joints often don’t just create pain — they create poor movement patterns, altered muscle activation, loss of balance, instability, compensation, and reduced performance.

One of the goals of chiropractic adjustments is not simply to “crack” a joint, but to restore motion and improve the quality of sensory information flowing back into the nervous system. Better input allows the brain to better map, coordinate, stabilise, and control that region again.

Sometimes the immediate improvement people feel after an adjustment isn’t because tissues magically healed in seconds — it’s because the nervous system has suddenly received clearer information again.

Movement is sensory input.
Sensory input drives control.
And control is what allows the body to function at its best.









20/05/2026

Corrective exercise is often perceived as “slow,” and in many ways that’s true. Tissue healing takes time. Muscles, ligaments, discs, tendons, and other soft tissues all heal and remodel at different rates, and there’s no shortcut around biology.

But what people often notice is that they can feel significantly better almost immediately after the right exercise intervention.

That’s usually not because we’ve instantly healed damaged tissue. It’s because we’ve created a rapid change in the nervous system improving the way the brain coordinates movement, stabilises joints, distributes load, and controls muscle activation patterns.

When movement becomes more efficient and stable, irritated tissues are often unloaded and protected more effectively, allowing them to function better while the longer-term healing process takes place.

In many cases, the nervous system changes first… and the tissue adaptation follows.

12/05/2026

Single-leg kettlebell swings with circles and handovers are a brutal but effective way to challenge lumbo-pelvic stability in a way that actually resembles the demands of running and change of direction.

As the kettlebell moves around the body front-to-back and side-to-side, the pelvis has to constantly react to a variable load through multiple planes of motion. That means the glute medius and glute minimus on the stance leg have to work hard to keep the pelvis level and controlled — exactly what they’re responsible for during foot strike and mid-stance in gait.

When we lose control of the pelvis in this phase of running, we often see compensations and inefficiencies that can contribute to issues up and down the chain:
   •   Hip pain
   •   ITB irritation
   •   Knee overload
   •   Shin and foot issues
   •   Lower back tightness
   •   Reduced running efficiency and power transfer

On top of that, these drills demand:
   •   Balance and proprioception
   •   Intrinsic foot strength
   •   Frontal plane control
   •   Rotational stability
   •   Reactive coordination

Strength is important. But the ability to stabilise and transfer force dynamically on one leg is where performance and injury resilience are built.

07/05/2026

Not every ache, burn, or nerve-type symptom is a “mechanical problem.”

I recently saw a runner dealing with low back pain and a burning, sunburn-like sensation through both thighs during runs. Naturally, he assumed it was related to his longstanding “wear and tear” in the lower back. But after exploring things further, the symptoms turned out to be linked to a recent medication change. Once the dosage was adjusted, the symptoms resolved.

It’s an important reminder:
You can’t treat a mechanical problem with a chemical solution… but you also can’t treat a chemical problem with a mechanical solution.

Medications such as Ozempic and Lipitor can, in some cases, contribute to nerve-like symptoms, altered sensation, muscle pain, burning, weakness, or exercise intolerance. That doesn’t mean the medication is “bad” or that people shouldn’t take them — but it does mean context matters.

If you’ve recently started or changed a medication regimen and you begin developing unusual pain, burning, tingling, numbness, or muscle symptoms, it’s worth exploring whether the issue may be chemical, mechanical… or a combination of both.

Good treatment starts with asking the right question.

28/04/2026

Here’s the post with hashtags added:

⸻

When dealing with pelvic weakness—particularly poor glute med function—runners often develop compensatory strategies that can look very different on the surface.

One common pattern is a narrow step width, where the foot crosses toward or over the midline. At first glance, this runner may appear relatively stable, even maintaining what looks like a level pelvis. However, this is a deceptive compensation. By reducing the lateral distance between foot placements, the body effectively lowers the demand on the hip abductors. It’s a strategy that trades optimal alignment for control—masking the underlying weakness rather than exposing it.

In contrast, another runner may demonstrate a more appropriate step width, placing the foot where we’d typically want it for efficient load transfer. But here’s the catch: this position increases the demand on the glute med to stabilise the pelvis in single-leg stance. If that capacity isn’t there, the weakness becomes obvious—often presenting as a contralateral pelvic drop. In this case, the runner isn’t compensating to hide the problem; they’re moving in a way that reveals it.

So while the first runner “looks better,” they may actually be avoiding load, whereas the second runner, despite showing a visible pelvic tilt, is operating closer to a more functional movement strategy—just without the strength to support it yet.

⸻


30/03/2026

These side-by-side comparisons show a powerful shift in this runner’s mechanics.

On the right side, the change is most obvious:
- Reduced pelvic tilt
- Improved control through stance
- Torso now sitting more centrally over the pelvis

This is what we’re chasing — stacking the system so the body can transfer force cleanly instead of leaking it.

On the left side, the improvements are more subtle but still important:
- Less pelvic drop
- Better alignment between pelvis and torso
- More stable base through mid-stance

And when we look at the lateral view, the change is just as significant:
- The upper body is no longer pitched forward and disconnected
- He’s now lifted and stacked over his hips
- Posture is controlled rather than held together with tension

Why this matters

When the pelvis is unstable or the torso isn’t centred, the body has to create stiffness to survive the movement:
- Overactive hip flexors
- Tight lower back
- Excess calf and quad load
- Energy leaking in every step

By improving control and alignment, we:
- Reduce unnecessary muscular tension
- Improve force transfer through the system
- Create smoother, more economical stride mechanics

This isn’t about trying harder — it’s about removing what’s getting in the way.

Less compensation.
More control.
Better efficiency.

Reset. Rebuild. Run

26/03/2026

Do you see injury through the sort of lens that is going to give you the best long term outcome?

05/03/2026

One of the most common things we see in runners is a narrow step width. When the foot lands too close to the midline, the pelvis often drops to the opposite side. Over time this can increase stress through the hip, knee and lower leg and reduce efficiency with each stride.

In this runner’s analysis you can see an obvious pelvic tilt during stance, which often reflects limited frontal plane control of the pelvis and hip. When the body lacks control here, the leg tends to drift inward and the step width narrows.

To address this we used a high-knee lunge with a power band. The band provides a lateral pull that challenges the body to stabilise the pelvis while driving the knee up. To control the movement, the runner must actively recruit the adductor muscle group, helping create better hip stability and alignment.

The adductors play an important role in controlling pelvic position and managing step width during running. Training them in a dynamic, running-specific position helps translate strength directly into better mechanics.

Part of our process:
Reset → Rebuild → Run

Address

Suite 104, 506 Miller Street
Cammeray, NSW
2062

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 12pm
2pm - 6pm
Tuesday 7am - 12pm
Wednesday 2pm - 6pm
Thursday 7am - 12pm
2pm - 6pm
Saturday 8am - 12pm

Telephone

+299290515

Website

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