Mark Howlin
Associate Physiotherapist, Musculoskeletal & Sports Injuries (BSc, MSc, GEMt) · physiotherapist
AHPRA registered · PHY0004060355
Sporting Injuries · Chronic Pain · Post-Operative Care · Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy
Mark Howlin is an Associate Physiotherapist at Physio K, with a focus on sporting injuries and post-operative rehabilitation, with advanced dry needling training from Ireland and Sydney. Across six years of clinical practice in Ireland and Australia, he has developed particular experience in chronic conditions such as anterior knee pain and Achilles tendinopathy, and acute lower limb muscle strains, using an integrated approach combining manual therapy, dry needling, and progressive rehabilitation. He has also served as team physiotherapist to elite GAA athletes, including during a championship-winning run at Croke Park.
About
Mark Howlin is an Associate Physiotherapist at Physio K, bringing six years of comprehensive musculoskeletal experience gained across Ireland and Australia. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Athletic Therapy and Training from Dublin City University and a Level 9 Masters in Physiotherapy from University College Dublin.
Over three years working in high-volume clinic environments, Mark has developed particular experience in managing sporting injuries, post-operative rehabilitation, chronic pain, and mobility disorders. His clinical focus encompasses acute lower limb muscle strains—including hamstring, quadriceps, and calf injuries—alongside joint sprains and chronic conditions such as anterior knee pain, medial tibial stress syndrome, and Achilles tendinopathy.
Mark integrates pain neuroscience education with manual therapy, combining hands-on techniques such as dry needling, joint mobilisation, and soft tissue massage with progressive exercise-based rehabilitation. This approach helps patients understand their condition whilst working toward against re-injury. Having completed dry needling training in Ireland and through the GEMT Dry Needling course in Sydney, he brings an internationally-informed perspective to treatment. Mark addresses both immediate symptoms and contributing factors.
His sporting background includes extensive work with soccer, rugby, Gaelic football, and hurling populations. A career highlight was serving as team physiotherapist for his home club during an exceptional period of success, culminating in seven senior county titles and the 2022 All-Ireland Club Championship, with the privilege of treating athletes at Croke Park.
Clinical Approach
Mark describes his approach as biopsychosocial in its practical application, prioritising listening and gathering information before examination. Rather than hunting for a single structural diagnosis, he works from a fuller picture of contributing factors, recognising that pain rarely stems from one source alone. His treatment plans extend beyond exercises to include subtle changes to how patients live day to day, alongside targeted rehabilitation.
Central to Mark's practice is patient education, particularly around the distinction between pain resolution and tissue recovery. He emphasises that the absence of pain doesn't equate to full resolution, especially with conditions like anterior knee pain where premature return to activity can lead to flare-ups. This educational focus helps patients understand why their pain developed, enabling them to self-manage, spot triggers, and adapt their training to help avoid re-injury long after leaving the clinic. Mark addresses both immediate symptoms and underlying causes, helping patients build long-term resilience rather than providing short-term fixes alone.
In Mark's own words
YOUR SPECIALIST CONDITION
Almost every runner I see with anterior knee pain is training for something. Often it's their first marathon, and they've approached it the only way they know how: throw everything at it. Maximise volume, chase every session, treat rest as wasted time. The first fear is always the same though. That ache around the kneecap, and people jump straight to the worst case: a ligament tear, something structural, something that ends their training block. One of the most satisfying parts of my job is being the person who tells them it's not that, and watching the relief land. Because what's actually happening is a load problem, not a fragility one. It builds up quietly, and it's usually in the back half of a training block, right when the stakes feel highest, that the pain starts creeping in. The instinct at that point is to push through, since backing off feels like losing ground. But more often than not, less is exactly what they need, a genuine reduction in load, not just a tweak. That's a hard sell to someone three weeks out from race day. So education ends up being the real treatment. Once someone understands why this happened, they stop being afraid of their own knee, and they start being able to manage it themselves, not just for this race, but for the next one too.
WHO HAS SHAPED YOUR PRACTICE
My old boss, Keith Fox, and separately David Grey through his work online. Keith gets the credit for the early days. A first job can be daunting, and he made me feel like no question was too small and no case too messy to bring to him, even though he was run off his feet himself. If something I tried wasn't working, he never just told me the answer. He'd throw out another angle to try and push me to think about the problem differently, which is a much slower way to teach someone but it's the reason I actually learned instead of just copying him. Furthermore, David Grey, I've followed for years now, and it's his approach to rehab that keeps pulling me back. He's constantly putting out new exercise choices and pain management ideas, and crucially, explaining why they actually work rather than just what to do. That habit of always asking why has done more for my understanding of the body than most of what I learned in my formal training.
EXPLAINING SPORTING INJURIES TO PATIENTS
The first question is almost always: "Is it serious?" Most of the time I can tell them no, straight away, and I watch them relax a little. But I'm honest that it can be a stubborn one. It's not dangerous, it's just annoying, and it can drag on and flare up if you let it. The question that follows straight after is always "why did it happen?" This is where I slow down, because the answer they're expecting is usually one simple thing, a weak muscle, bad shoes, flat feet. The truth is it's rarely just one thing. I walk them through it: too much too soon, running volume that's stayed high for too long without a break, foot posture, the surfaces they're training on, muscle weakness around the hip and knee. Usually it's two or three of these stacked on top of each other, not one villain to blame. That's the moment education actually starts to matter, because once they stop hunting for the one thing that broke and start seeing the whole picture, they understand why the fix isn't a quick tweak either.
YOUR CLINICAL APPROACH
Biopsychosocial, but the practical version, not the one you'd find on a slide in university. Early in my career I was the physio who went straight for the sore spot. Someone would come in with lower back pain and I'd spend the whole session trying to find the one structure responsible, convinced there had to be a clean diagnosis sitting in there somewhere. When I couldn't find it, I genuinely got stuck. It didn't occur to me that the answer might not be sitting in the tissue at all. What changed things was realising I was skipping the most useful part of the appointment, which is just listening. So now the first session is mostly that. I'm not examining, I'm gathering, letting the patient tell me what they think is happening, what they've been told before, what they've tried, what scares them about it. Every one of those pieces tells me something about the picture, not just the pain itself.
By the time I actually get hands on, I'm not hunting for a diagnosis anymore. I'm working from a fuller picture of what's likely feeding the problem, which is almost always more than one thing. That's why the treatment plan rarely stops at exercises. Half the time it's a few subtle changes to how someone's living day to day, alongside the targeted rehab, because the rehab on its own was never going to be enough to shift something with that many contributors behind it.
THE BIGGEST MYTH ABOUT SPORTING INJURIES
The myth I find myself correcting in almost every appointment is the belief that once the pain has gone, the problem has gone with it. I understand why people think this way, we naturally associate the severity of an injury with how much it hurts, so when the discomfort fades, it feels reasonable to assume the underlying issue has resolved too. Unfortunately, with anterior knee pain, that's rarely the case. What's actually happened at that point is that we've removed or reduced the aggravating factors, which is an important first step, but it isn't the same as full resolution. The tissue may still be some way off tolerating the demands that caused the problem in the first place. If someone returns to their previous running volume at this stage, assuming they're back to normal simply because it doesn't hurt, it's an almost predictable outcome that the pain will return, often within a matter of weeks. This is why I place so much emphasis on a structured, graded return to running rather than a straight jump back to where they left off. The absence of pain is a useful sign, but it isn't the whole picture, and treating it as one tends to set patients up for the very flare up we're trying to avoid.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
For most runners with anterior knee pain, success isn't a quick fix, it's a structured de-load followed by a gradual, graded return to running. It means learning to read the knee rather than fearing it: understanding safe pain levels, adjusting sessions based on how it responds, and trusting the process even when the instinct is to push through. Done properly, that shift from "avoiding pain" to "managing load" is usually what gets someone back to running with confidence.
Specialist Areas
Mark's focus encompasses musculoskeletal physiotherapy, sporting injuries, post-operative care, and chronic pain management. His approach combines manual therapy techniques including Maitlands mobilisation, muscle energy techniques, and myofascial release with exercise rehabilitation to identify and treat contributing factors rather than symptoms alone. Having completed GEMt dry needling training in Sydney, he has integrated this technique into his practice, using it alongside manual therapy particularly for runners with chronic hamstring and calf trigger points and patients with chronic non-specific lower back pain.
His sporting injury experience centres on runners and field sport athletes, with particular experience in managing anterior knee pain, hamstring strains, and overuse injuries. Mark structures post-operative care around each stage of the recovery timeline, using targeted hands-on treatment and progressive rehabilitation to safely restore movement, strength and function while protecting the surgical site. His experience spans soccer, rugby, Gaelic football, and hurling populations, informed by his role as team physiotherapist during his home club's successful championship campaigns.
Backgroung & Credentials
Experience: 6 years
Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Athletic Therapy and Training, Level 9 Masters in Physiotherapy, GEMt Trained Dry Needler
Conditions treated: Hamstring Strains, Rotator Cuff Tendinopathy, Runners/Jumpers Knee, Low Back Pain, Ankle Sprains, ACL Reconstruction, Plantar Fasciitis
Notable Organisations
Longford Rugby Club (sports-team, 2023-2026)
My matchday and club responsibilities include pre-match taping and manual therapy, diagnosing and rehabilitating injuries within the squad, and providing pitch-side cover during games.
Longford Ladies GAA (sports-team, 2022-2024)
I provide pitch-side cover on matchdays, carry out pre-match taping and manual therapy, and manage the diagnosis and rehabilitation of injuries across the club.
Longford Slashers GAA (sports-team, 2019-2025)
Within the club, I handle pre-match taping and manual therapy, diagnose and rehabilitate player injuries, and am present pitch-side to provide cover during matches.
Achievements
Dry Needling (2026)
In May of 2026, I completed Trigger Point Dry Needling – Applications for Pain Management and Sports Injuries, Level 1 Foundations, delivered by GEMT in Sydney Australia, NSW. The course provided the theoretical grounding and supervised hands-on training required to safely and effectively perform dry needling, a technique involving the insertion of fine, sterile needles into myofascial trigger points to release muscle tension, reduce pain, and restore function. Since completing the certification, I've integrated dry needling into my regular treatment approach at Physio K for patients presenting with chronic muscular pain and sports-related injuries, using it alongside manual therapy and rehab planning rather than as a standalone treatment. I've now used the technique with over 50 patients, most commonly runners with chronic hamstring and calf trigger points and patients with chronic non-specific lower back pain. In this patient group, I've found it a genuinely useful addition alongside manual therapy and progressive rehab, particularly for patients who haven't fully responded to manual therapy alone, though this is based on clinical observation rather than formal outcome tracking. It's become a genuinely useful tool for patients who haven't responded fully to manual therapy on its own, and I'm now working towards Level 2 to build on this foundation.
Bachelor's degree in Athletic Therapy and Training (2018)
A Bachelor's degree in Athletic Therapy and Training is an undergraduate qualification focused on the prevention, assessment, and rehabilitation of sports-related injuries, combining foundational education in anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and exercise science with practical clinical training in injury management. For someone progressing into physiotherapy, this degree provides a strong grounding in musculoskeletal assessment and hands-on rehabilitation techniques, forming a natural foundation before undertaking postgraduate physiotherapy training and building toward sports injury care.
Publications
Physio K Clinical Background (conference-presentation)
Continuing Professional Development
Trigger Point Dry Needling – Applications for Pain Management and Sports Injuries, Level 1 Foundations (GEMt Australia, 31st May 2026, 39.00 hrs)