Albert Moreno, physiotherapist, osteopath and director of Upline Clinic in Barcelona, presents the case of an elite professional athlete who, after a surgical intervention for a shoulder labrum injury, remained four months away from competition. As he explains, in addition to conventional post-surgical treatment aimed at recovering mobility, functionality and reducing pain, the team decided to incorporate NESA as part of complementary work focused on three key objectives: improving sleep quality, reducing the impact of emotional stress associated with the injury and addressing the central somatization derived from having competed for a long period with pain.
To objectify the evolution, they used monitoring tools such as the Oura ring to measure REM and non-REM sleep, as well as parameters of cardiac variability and adaptive capacity of the nervous system. In this context, they observed that, after approximately three weeks, very striking changes occurred both in rest quality and in the athlete’s adaptive capacity. As Albert relates, the improvement in non-REM sleep and general rest was parallel to a favorable evolution of the pain clinic and greater stability in the body’s response.
The case highlights the importance of the so-called “invisible work” in high-performance sports: that which not only seeks to recover from an injury, but to optimize the internal processes that sustain recovery, physiological balance and return to maximum competitive level.
