Five Dock Sports Podiatry or Physio: Who to See
If you've been searching for Five Dock sports podiatry because your heel hurts every morning, your shins ache after football training, or your ankle keeps rolling on grass, the first question is which profession actually handles your problem. Podiatrists and physiotherapists both work on feet and ankles. They come at it from different angles, and for some issues you want one, for some the other, and for a few you want both.
SportsFit Health & Rehab provides physiotherapy, exercise physiology and strength and conditioning at Five Dock and Gladesville. We do not provide podiatry. What follows is a practical guide to sorting out who you need, including how NDIS funding handles each one.
What a sports podiatrist works on
Podiatrists are the foot and lower limb specialists. Their scope covers skin and nail conditions, footwear assessment and prescription, custom and prefabricated orthotics, and structural issues in the foot itself. If your problem involves an ingrown toenail, recurrent blisters or callus from pressure points, a diabetic foot check, a suspected stress fracture in a metatarsal, or a forefoot deformity changing how your shoe fits, a podiatrist is the right first call.
They also assess foot posture and gait mechanics, and can prescribe orthoses where the foot's position under load looks like part of the picture. Whether an orthotic helps a given person depends on the diagnosis, the sport and how the device is used alongside everything else, so treat it as one option rather than a default.
What a sports physiotherapist works on
Physiotherapy focuses on the joints, tendons, muscles and movement patterns feeding into the foot and ankle, plus the loading history that produced the problem. Common presentations we assess at Five Dock include lateral ankle sprains and the chronic instability that can follow, Achilles tendon pain, plantar heel pain, medial tibial stress syndrome (shin splints), calf strains, and the ankle stiffness that shows up after a period in a boot.
The work usually centres on graded loading. Tendons and bone respond to how much load they get, how often, and how quickly it increases. A large part of an ankle or Achilles plan is mapping out what your training week actually looks like, finding where the spike happened, and rebuilding capacity from there.
Where the two overlap
Plantar heel pain is the clearest overlap. A podiatrist may look at footwear, foot posture and offloading. A physiotherapist will look at calf strength, ankle dorsiflexion range, body weight changes, and how your running or walking volume shifted in the weeks before symptoms started. Both perspectives are reasonable, and plenty of people see both.
Shin pain is similar. A stress reaction in the tibia needs load management and often imaging referral. Footwear and foot mechanics can be part of the discussion. Recurrent ankle sprains sit more clearly in physiotherapy territory, because the main modifiable factors are strength, balance and single-leg control rather than the structure of the foot.
If we assess you and think the problem is primarily podiatric, we will say so and suggest you see a podiatrist. That is a normal part of the process, not a failure of the appointment.
What a foot and ankle assessment involves
An initial physiotherapy appointment at Five Dock runs about 45 minutes. We take a detailed history of your training or activity load, including what changed in the four to eight weeks before symptoms appeared, your footwear, the surfaces you train on, and any previous injuries to the same limb.
Physical testing usually includes ankle range of motion (the knee-to-wall test for dorsiflexion is quick and repeatable), single-leg calf raise endurance, single-leg balance, hop and landing quality if you're at that stage, and palpation to localise the painful structure. For runners and field sport athletes we'll often watch you walk, run or change direction so the assessment reflects what you actually do.
You leave with a working diagnosis, an explanation of the load factors involved, a small number of exercises, and a plan for what happens over the next few weeks. Where imaging or a podiatry opinion looks warranted, we'll organise the referral.
NDIS funding for podiatry and physiotherapy
Both podiatry and physiotherapy sit under Capacity Building in an NDIS plan, most commonly in Improved Daily Living. Funding is not split by profession, so the same budget line can cover either, subject to your plan's stated goals and the funds available.
How you book depends on plan management. Self-managed and plan-managed participants can use registered or unregistered providers. NDIA-managed participants need to use NDIS registered providers. If you are unsure which applies to you, check the top of your plan or ask your support coordinator before booking, since it changes your options.
Foot and ankle work fits an NDIS plan most naturally where it connects to a stated goal, such as returning to club football, walking longer distances in the community, or building capacity to train twice a week. We write progress notes against those goals so the evidence is there at your plan review.
Signs it's worth getting assessed
Book an appointment if pain has lasted more than two weeks without improving, if an ankle has rolled more than twice in a season, if you cannot do ten single-leg calf raises on the affected side, if pain wakes you at night, or if you're limping. Sharp, localised bone pain that worsens with each training session should be checked promptly, since stress fractures generally need a period of offloading rather than more running.
If you're in Five Dock or Gladesville and want your foot or ankle assessed, you can book an initial physiotherapy appointment with our team.