Josefina Canepa Bustos
MSc Senior Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist · physiotherapist
AHPRA registered · PHY0002918524
Paediatric Musculoskeletal Sports Rehabilitation · Overuse Sport Injuries Rehabilitation · Dry needling · Therapeutic exercise
Maria Josefina Cánepa Bustos is a Senior Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist specialising in sports and paediatric musculoskeletal rehabilitation, with eight years of clinical experience across private practice, sports clubs, and academic settings. Holds a Master of Science in Advanced Professional Practice in Paediatric Musculoskeletal Health, alongside postgraduate qualifications in therapeutic exercise and university teaching, with a focus on young athletes, injury prevention, and performance-based rehabilitation in sport settings.
About
Josefina Canepa Bustos is a Senior Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist with eight years of clinical experience spanning private practice, high-performance sport, and academia. She holds a Physiotherapy degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, a Master of Science in Advanced Professional Practice in Paediatric Musculoskeletal Health, and postgraduate qualifications in Therapeutic Exercise and University Teaching. Her clinical expertise is further enhanced by certification in Dry Needling through GEMt. She has worked at Club Deportivo Universidad Católica de Chile and as a lecturer at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, combining clinical practice with the education of future physiotherapists.
Throughout her career, Josefina has developed extensive experience treating athletes of all ages, with particular focus on young athletes and the management of overuse injuries. She has worked closely with field hockey players and athletes from various sports, helping them recover from injury, reduce recurrence risk, and optimise performance. Her clinical interests centre on lower limb conditions commonly seen in active individuals, including tendinopathies, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and growth-related conditions such as Osgood-Schlatter disease.
Josefina's treatment approach combines evidence-based exercise prescription, hands-on manual therapy including the Mulligan method, soft tissue release, and dry needling. Her practice philosophy reflects her Chilean training background where therapeutic exercise forms the foundation of rehabilitation, enhanced by manual therapy techniques she has refined through her Australian clinical experience. She creates personalised treatment plans tailored to each individual's specific needs and long-term goals, ensuring patients feel actively involved in their care.
Clinical Approach
Josefina's clinical approach begins from the moment a patient enters the room, observing their body mechanics, movement patterns, and compensations whilst paying careful attention to both verbal and non-verbal communication. She combines observation, listening, and palpation to form her clinical reasoning, prioritising movement assessment over symptoms alone. Her methodology integrates the exercise-focused Chilean physiotherapy model—where 90% of treatment centres on therapeutic exercise—with the hands-on techniques prevalent in Australian practice. This dual approach allows her to conduct thorough movement assessments, provide effective manual therapy and dry needling for symptom relief, and prescribe specific, individualised exercise programmes tailored to each patient and condition.
Her philosophy emphasises understanding the multifactorial nature of overuse injuries, looking beyond the symptomatic area to identify underlying causes such as altered joint mechanics, muscle imbalances, or movement pattern deficiencies. She utilises a traffic light system for pain management, helping patients understand how to continue activity safely through appropriate load modification. This approach, shaped by her experience working with athletes from developing to elite level, focuses on achieving both short-term symptom management and long-term recovery through strategic load management, strength training, and movement re-education.
In Josefina's own words
YOUR SPECIALIST CONDITION
The issues/conditions I find most interesting and challenging to treat are lower body overuse injuries in active people. Some examples of overuse injuries are tendinopathies, shin splints, plantar fasciitis and iliotibial band syndrome.
I like treating these conditions because you have to look at the big picture. The injury itself it's overuse, which means the tendon or structure is not being able to resist the load it's receiving, but the interesting part is understanding why. Is it because the mechanics of another joint is changing the way everything moves? Or is it because a muscle is super tight and is causing excessive pulling on a tendon or insertion point in the bone? Or are there weak/tight muscles that are making others take over all the time, causing tightness and pain? Or is it the way people are moving or training - not realizing they are not engaging their glutes for examples, loading only the quadriceps to do everything?
A lot of times is a combination of different factors, and I find very rewarding - for me and the patient - to be able to analyze how they are moving, find the cause of the issue, explain and educate the patient about why it is happening, treat the symptoms, and then give them a specific and tailored exercise program to have a long term solution.
WHO HAS SHAPED YOUR PRACTICE
My current clinical practice is a reflection of my years of experience working as a physiotherapist in both Chile and Australia. In Chile, physiotherapy is predominantly exercise-based, with approximately 90% of treatment focused on exercise rehabilitation and 10% on manual therapy, while in Australia it is almost the opposite.
In Chile, working in a large multi-sport club gave me the opportunity to work closely with athletes from different sporting backgrounds and levels of competition, ranging from developing and amateur athletes to professional and elite performers. Because of this variety, I learned how to adapt and modify exercises according to each athlete’s needs, whether based on the specific demands of their sport or their individual strengths and weaknesses. Also, I learned the importance of load management, strength training and recovery as part of training. Regular talks with strength and conditioning coaches, sport physicians, and the rest of the medical team, gave me the knowledge to see the athlete/patient in a comprehensive way.
On the other hand, here in Australia, the time spent with each patient is much shorter, which shifts the focus towards hands-on treatment and patient education. Having a background in manual therapy under the Mulligan concept, along with more than one year working with Kenny Merlevede, a certified Manual Therapist, as well as having completed dry needling training 8 years ago—knowledge that I have further developed through GEMt Dry Needling education here in Australia—has given me strong tools and a solid understanding of how to deliver effective hands-on treatment. Here, I’ve learned to listen to and educate the patient and their body, and to understand the importance of pain relief—achieved through manual therapy and dry needling—in order to progress to strength and control work with the body moving freely. I’ve also learned the value of working with my own hands, as sometimes what the patient really needs is to release a trigger point in the muscle, restore or “unlock” joint movement, or simply understand the root cause of their issue so they can make small adjustments with big impact.
Today, I combine both experiences in my clinical practice. I focus on conducting a thorough movement assessment, educating the patient, and addressing symptoms as efficiently and effectively as possible during the session, while also providing a specific, individualised exercise program tailored to each patient and condition.
EXPLAINING OVERUSE SPORT INJURIES REHABILITATION TO PATIENTS
1) Patient: "Why did this happen? I haven't done anything different."
Me: "That's actually one of the most common things I hear. Overuse injuries rarely come from a single event. They're usually the result of several factors building up over time, such as training load, recovery, strength deficits, movement patterns, or even stress and sleep. My job is to identify which factors are contributing in your case and help you address them so you can recover and reduce the risk of it happening again."
2) Patient: "I don't understand. If my muscles feel tight all the time, how can they be weak? Doesn't a tight muscle mean a stronger muscle?"
Me: "Not necessarily. Tightness and strength are two different things. In fact, sometimes a muscle feels tight because it's working harder than it should to compensate for weakness somewhere else. At the same time, for a muscle to be strong, it needs to be able to both contract and relax effectively. A muscle that is constantly tight doesn't have the freedom to generate as much force or power as it should. That's why our goal is often not only to reduce the tightness, but also to improve strength, control, and movement quality."
3) Patient: "So that's why I feel stiff all the time? Like I'm not flexible?"
Me: "Exactly. When the body doesn't feel confident or strong enough to control a movement, its natural protective response is to 'tighten up' and create stiffness, so it can stay in a safer, more stable position. In many cases, building strength through different ranges of motion actually leads to better mobility, because the body learns that it can control those positions safely."
YOUR CLINICAL APPROACH
My approach is a combination of observing, listening, and feeling. From the moment the patient comes into the room, I start assessing their body mechanics — how they move, whether they are compensating, and how they are using the affected limb. It is also very important to read their body language: listening to what they say, but also paying attention to what they don’t say — the discomfort in certain positions, or the postures they adopt to avoid pain.
During the subjective interview, I begin ruling things out and forming a working hypothesis based on the history and pain behaviour. Once I have an initial idea, my approach is always movement first — symptoms are informative, but not the main problem. From the movement assessment, I get a sense of their control and quality of movement, which helps me narrow down what may be driving those patterns.
Once I have a clearer understanding of the underlying drivers, I then combine feeling, palpation, and movement assessment to guide treatment. This allows me to integrate hands-on treatment with active rehabilitation in a strategic way, rather than treating them as separate phases.
This approach has been shaped by my experience in sports clubs and private practice, as well as working in both Chile and Australia, which have given me two very different but complementary models of care.
THE BIGGEST MYTH ABOUT OVERUSE SPORT INJURIES REHABILITATION
“Do I have to stop completely because of this?” is usually the biggest concern.
The answer is no. With most overuse injuries, it’s all about load management. Reducing intensity, frequency, or duration is usually the key to continuing activity without aggravating symptoms.
A helpful guide is the traffic light system for pain: pain between 0–3/10 is the green zone — mild discomfort that does not prevent you from continuing. Pain between 3–5/10 is the yellow zone — you can continue with caution, but you need to pay attention to how long it takes to settle and whether it worsens after activity. If it lingers and/or gets worse, then the load needs to be reduced. Pain above 5–6/10 is the red zone, where your body is signalling that it is not tolerating the load at that time and you should stop.
Since overuse injuries are usually multifactorial, it often takes a few weeks or months to return to previous training loads. In the meantime, we focus on strengthening and preparing the tissues so that when you do progress, your body is able to tolerate that load safely.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
I remember an elite female triathlete who was preparing for a marathon but was experiencing bilateral shin splints. We focused on strengthening her proximal lower body — core, glutes, and hamstrings — to reduce the load on the lower legs, while also managing her running load and prioritising cycling and swimming for cardiovascular training.
By the time of her race, she was still experiencing some mild discomfort after around 10 km of running. In the days leading up to the race, we used dry needling, soft tissue release, and joint mobilisation — all aimed at allowing the body to move as freely as possible for the event. She performed at her best pace and felt very confident during the race, with no significant issues.
Afterwards, we continued working on strength and movement patterns, and she was able to run without symptoms. A couple of months later, she completed the Pucón Ironman 70.3 with her best performance.
This is an example of how you can work towards a performance goal while still managing symptoms strategically in the short term, while continuing the underlying work needed for long-term recovery and adaptation.
Specialist Areas
Josefina brings specialised expertise in paediatric musculoskeletal sports rehabilitation, backed by her Master of Science in Advanced Professional Practice in Paediatric Musculoskeletal Health and five years of focused clinical experience. Her work with young athletes emphasises growth-related musculoskeletal conditions, load management, and return-to-sport planning. She has particular expertise in treating conditions such as Osgood-Schlatter disease, combining her understanding of developmental biomechanics with sport-specific rehabilitation strategies.
Her six years of experience in overuse sport injury rehabilitation encompasses comprehensive management of tendinopathies including rotator cuff, patellar, and Achilles tendinopathy, as well as conditions such as shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and iliotibial band syndrome. With seven years of dry needling practice, including Level I and Level II certification through GEMt, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Therapeutic Exercise, she employs progressive loading strategies and targeted manual therapy techniques to restore function and enhance physical performance. Her published research on field hockey injury prevention and physical assessment further demonstrates her evidence-based approach to sports rehabilitation.
Expertise & Credentials
Experience: 8 years
Qualifications: Physiotherapy degree (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile), Master of Science in Advanced Professional Practice in Paediatric Musculoskeletal Health, Postgraduate Diploma in Therapeutic Exercise, Postgraduate Diploma in University Teaching, Dry Needling Certification, Dry needling level I, Dry needling level II
Conditions treated: Rotator Cuff tendinopathy, Patellar tendinopathy, Shin splints, Plantar fasciitis, Tennis elbow, Achilles tendinopathy, Osgood-Schlatter, Muscle tears, Meniscus injuries, Persistent Low Back Pain, Rotator Cuff Tears, Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome, Frozen Shoulder
Notable Organisations
East Women's Hockey Club (sports-team, 2026-current)
We work with East Women’s Hockey Club providing sports physiotherapy services focused on injury prevention and management, performance optimisation, and safe return to sport. Our approach combines individual assessment, manual therapy, and evidence-based exercise rehabilitation, supporting players throughout the season to stay healthy, strong, and available to perform at their best.
Achievements
Dry Needling level I (2025)
Publications
Youth Female Field Hockey Players Physical Condition (journal-article, 2023-12-31)
Consideraciones del hockey sobre césped para profesionales del área de salud (book-chapter)
Pre-competitive functional physical assessment in field hockey players (other)
Kinesiología músculoesquelética pediátrica en Chile, ¿qué piensan los profesionales?(journal-article)
Efectividad del Programa de Prevención de Lesiones en Seleccionados Masculinos de Hockey sobre Césped (journal-article)
Continuing Professional Development
First Aid/CPR (Australia Wide First, 7 February 2026)
Dry Needling level II (GEMt, June 2026)
IPC (Sentrient, 31 December 2025)
Dry needling level 1 (GEMt, 6 April 2025, 39.00 hrs)